Poems of Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar A. Poe.

POEMS OF EDGAI
ALLAN POE^Wm

MEMOIR

NEW YORK, THOMAS Y.
CROWELL & COMPANY, K
PUBLISHERS _ _ - - .

s

POEMS

OF

EDGAR ALLAN POE

WITH BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH BY

N. H. DOLE.

NEW YORK

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.
PUBLISHERS

GIFT OF

rt /J

COPYRIGHT, 1892,

>»Y ;
T. Y. CROWELL & C6. ,

A

PREFACE TO THE POEMS.

These trifles are collected and republished chiefly
with a view to their redemption from the many im
provements to which they have been subjected while
going at random " the rounds of the press." I am
naturally anxious that what I have written should
circulate as I wrote it, if it circulate at all. In de
fence of my own taste, nevertheless, it is incumbent
upon me to say that I think nothing in this volume
of much value to the public, or very creditable to
myself.

Events not to be controlled have prevented me
from making, at any time, any serious effort in what,
under happier circumstances, would have been the
field of my choice. With me poetry has been not a
purpose, but a passion ; and the passions should be
held in reverence. They must not — they cannot
at will be excited, with an eye to the paltry com
pensations, or the more paltry commendations of

mankind.

E. A. P.

3

M103284

CONTENTS.

PAGE

PREFACE TO THE POEMS 3

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 7

THE POETIC PRINCIPLE -jr

THE RAVEN ' . «-. ^

LENORE 74

THE BELLS 76

ANNABEL LEE 80

ULALUME 81

THE COLISEUM 85

To HELEN 86

To 89

A VALENTINE 90

To MY MOTHER 9I

HYMN gl

AN ENIGMA 92

THE HAUNTED PALACE 92

THE CONQUEROR WORM 94

To ONE IN PARADISE 96

To F— s S. O— D 97

THE CITY IN THE SEA

97

SILENCE 99

THE SLEEPER loo

THE VALLEY OF UNREST 102

5

6 CONTENTS.

PAGE

A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM . . . .103

DREAM-LAND 104

To ZANTE 106

EULALIE. . 1 06

ELDORADO 107

ISRAFEL IDS

FOR ANNIE .no

To F— 114

BRIDAL BALLAD 114

To — 116

SCENES FROM " POLITIAN " 116

POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH:

SONNET — To SCIENCE 138

AL AARAAF .... . 139

To THE RIVER — 156

TAMERLANE 156

FAIRY-LAND 165

To L. M. S — 1 66

ROMANCE . . . . . . . 167

SPIRITS OF THE DEAD 168

To — 169

A DREAM 169

THE LAKE. — To — 170

SONG 171

To HELEN 172

ALONE 172

THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION ... 175

THE POWER OF WORDS 193

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. •'•.:

About the middle of the last century John Poe
emigrated from the North of Ireland to Pennsylvania.
His son, David Poe, was a wheelwright, who, through
his natural leadership, became Assistant Quarter
master-General for Baltimore during the Revolu
tionary War. His oldest son, also David Poe, was
tempted from the dry study of law by the glamour of
the footlights. He made " his second appearance on
any stage11 at Charleston, South Carolina, early in
December, 1803. The next year he joined a strolling
company of players, and finally married the widow
of Mr. C. D. Hopkins, who had been one of the
most popular of the " stars."

The young couple drifted to Boston, where Mrs.
Poe as a girl had made her American debut in June,
1796. Her mother was Mrs. Arnold, an English
actress from Covent Garden.

For three years they lived in Boston, where the
wife in the course of time became " the leading
lady," playing ** Cordelia," or "Ophelia,11 or "Pal
myra" to John Howard Payne^ "Zaphna," and
similar parts, though the current praise of her
"moral qualities and domestic virtues" did not
altogether disarm the severer criticism of her acting.

10 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

Of these Thespian parents Edgar Allan Poe was
the second son, and he was born on January 19, 1809.

Shortly afterwards they removed to New York,
where they remained through the next winter, " act
ing 'the romantic t afrd: sentimental drama and light
cdwledy ©f ''the p\3tio(V"'

* £Joth\Rgi -further is 'known of David Poe : he is
Glipp-osed •' to; ;hay;e/died of consumption. Mrs. Poe
went South, and acted with approbation in the cities
of the southern circuit. But she fell into a decline.
Being in utter destitution, she appealed to the charity
of the humane to attend her benefit night. On
December 8, 1811, she died, and her children were
taken by sympathetic friends.

Edgar was adopted by Mr. John Allan of Rich
mond, a wealthy tobacco-dealer, of Scotch descent
and origin. The black-eyed, curly-haired boy, at the
age of six, could read, draw, and dance : one of his
accomplishments was to declaim pieces. He was
sent to a private school. During the summer months
for several years he went with Mr. and Mrs. Allan to
White Sulphur Springs, where he had his dogs and
pony.

In 1815 he was taken to England and placed at the
Manor House School, Stoke Newington, where he
remained till he was twelve years old, learning to
construe Latin, speak French, write verses, run,
jump, and swim.

On his return to Richmond he was put into
Clarke's, afterward Burke's, Classical School, where,
it is said, he " cut a considerable figure," coming to
stand next the head of his class, and excelling all his

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. II

fellows in athletic sports, and in the literary feats of
debate and poetry.

At home he had been petted and spoiled. At
school he was haughty and overbearing, this fault
jeing intensified by the treatment to which his aristo
cratic Virginian classmates subjected one known as
the son of " play-actors." He made no intimate
friends, but lived mainly by himself in a world of
dreams.

Once, according to his own story, the mother of
one of his younger schoolmates, a lovely, gracious
lady, spoke kindly to him The tones of her voice
thrilled him and kindled within him " the first purely
ideal love of his soul."1

She died when she was only thirty-one years old,
and for a long time the lonely lad of fifteen haunted
her grave by night, and the experience of her loss
and his desolation tinged his verse all his life long.
During his school-days he paid some attention to
iMiss Sarah Elmira Royster, a neighbor's daughter.
But her father intercepted his letters, and the romance
ended at the time in her early marriage.

On February 14, 1826, having finished his prepara
tions under a private tutor employed in Mr. Allan's
newly purchased mansion-house, Poe entered the
University of Virginia, where he studied the ancient
and modern languages, and gave his leisure time to
athletic sports or mingled with the faster set around
the card-table and the punch-bowl.

He was short, thick-set, compactly built, bow-
-egged, with a quick, jerky gait ; his face was habitu
ally grave and melancholy, though it kindled into

12 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

animation if he grew excited in debate ; his hair was
dark and curly Even at that time he had a notori
ous passion for strong drink. At play he was bold
and reckless : thus he not only lost caste among the
aristocratic students of the college, but ended the
year with gambling-debts amounting to twenty-five
hundred dollars.

In these circumstances Mr. Allan removed him
from college and put him into his own counting-
room. Poe soon revolted, and in the spring of 1827
ran away to Boston, where he published his first vol
ume, entitled " Tamerlane and Other Poems by a
Bostonian." The " other poems " were nine in num
ber and easily showed the influence of Byron.

It is supposed that Poe lived in his native city
under an assumed name.

Toward the last of May one Edgar A. Perry was
enrolled as a private soldier in the United States
Army. He gave his age as twenty-two ; his occupa
tion as that of a clerk. He was entered in the record
as having gray eyes, brown hair, a fair complexion,
and a height of five feet, eight inches.

This was Edgar Allan Poe.

During the summer he was on duty at Fort Inde
pendence. In October, he was transferred with
Battery H of the First Artillery, to Charleston, S. C,
and a year later to Fortress Monroe, Va. He was
company clerk and assistant in the commissariat
department, and on the first day of January, 1829,
he was appointed sergeant-major, having earned the
promotion by his faithfulness and good conduct.

Mrs. Allan died in the following February. Early

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 13

in March Poe returned to Richmond on leave of
absence, and was honorably discharged April I5th
by substitute. His taste of army life had caused him
to think of arms as his profession, and after a delay
of nearly a year he received his appointment as Cadet
at West Point. Mr Allan gave his formal consent,
and Poe entered the Military Academy July I, 1830,
his age being recorded (through his false informa
tion) as nineteen years and five months,

Meantime he had published in Baltimore a second
volume, entitled " Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor
Poems.11 It was a thin volume of only seventy-one
pages The "minor poems11 were nine in number,
several being the same as appeared in his maiden
volume, but revised. The volume was largely dis
tributed among his acquaintances, but caused more
merriment than interest.

It took less than six months of life at West Point
to convince him that he had made a mistake. He
was proficient in French, and stood high in mathe
matics, but the routine of drill, roll-call and guard
duty was utterly irksome to him.

He urged his patron to let him resign, but as Mr.
Allan refused to sanction such a step, Poe systemati
cally neglected all his duties as a cadet, was called
before a court-martial, found guilty, and sentenced to
dismissal.

On March 7, 1831, he was again free and with just
twelve cents to his credit ! His classmates subscribed
enough to pay his fare to New York. He proposed
to reimburse them by a new volume of poems which
was soon published by Elam Bliss, with a dedication

14 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

to the United States Corps of Cadets. The half
dozen new poems which it contained seem to give a
slight presage of his genius.

It is not known whether he returned to Mr. Allan's
house. His patron was married for the second time,
and was expecting a lineal heir. He himself declared
that in the indulgence of his Quixotic sense of the
honorable, of the chivalrous, which he regarded as
the " true voluptuousness of his life," he deliberately
in his early youth threw from him a large fortune,
rather than endure a trivial wrong ! The probability
is that Mr. Allan, whether rightly or wrongly, con
sidered his adopted son as untrustworthy. He did
not take into account how far he himself was respon
sible by his foolishly lavish indulgence for the habits
into which the youth had fallen. Even in England
the boy was spoiled " by an extravagant amount of
pocket money."

Poe was now thrown on his own resources. First
he applied for a position on the Federal Gazette and
Baltimore Daily Advertiser, edited by William
Glynn. Disappointed in this, he offered his services
as assistant in a school at Reisterstown, near Balti
more. Nothing came of it. For eighteen months
he struggled on in the direst poverty. Then in the
summer of 1833 the Baltimore Saturday Visitor of
fered a prize of one hundred dollars for the best tale
in prose, and one of fifty dollars for the best poem.

Poe competed for both and would have won both
had not that been against the rules. Poe's story,
" A Manuscript Found in a Bottle," was accepted
and published.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 15

John P. Kennedy, author of " Swallow Barn," one
of the judges, went to look up the author, and found
him, he said, " in a state of starvation." He gave
him clothing, free access to his table, and the use of
a horse for exercise whenever he chose ; in fact,
brought him up from the very verge of despair.

During the next six months Poe contributed to the
Saturday Visitor, and earned small sums from other
literary work. His home was in the family of his
aunt, Mrs. Clemm, who with her daughter, Virginia,
then a child of eleven, had recently returned to
Baltimore to live.

In March, 1834, Mr. Allan died. Shortly before
his death Poe forced his way to his presence. Mr.
Allan threatened him with his cane, and ordered him
out. This was but the prelude to the total ignoring
of the young man in Mr. Allan's will.

His last hopes of inheriting a fortune being thus
disappointed, he collected his tales and sent them to
a Philadelphia publisher. During the summer he
composed his blank verse tragedy, " Politian," and
in the autumn worked on " Hans Pfaal."

Mr. T. W. White of Richmond, editor of the
Southern Literary Messenger, was struck by some
stories that Poe sent to him, and printed " Berenice1'
in the following March. After that, Poe became a
frequent contributor, and in June, 1835, he left Balti
more to become Mr. White's assistant, at a salary of
ten dollars a week.

Before his departure he became engaged to his
cousin Virginia. Neilson Poe, a relation of both,
objected with reason because the girl was not yet

1 6 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

thirteen years old. He offered to take her into his
own family and care for her till she should be
eighteen.

This f roposal destroyed for Poe all the glamour of
his bright prospects in Richmond. He hastened back
to Baltimore, and, evidently with the approval of Mrs.
Clemm, took out a marriage licence (September 22d),
and was probably married at Old Christ Church.

Neilson Poe's kindly offer was rejected, and
the Clemms soon removed to Richmond, where the
young husband was diligently working in his editorial
position.

His brilliant tales attracted attention, but it was by
a slashing editorial criticism of T. S. Fay's " Norman
Leslie " that the magazine was instantly brought into
universal notice. It was an advantage for the peri
odical, but it naturally brought odium upon the writer,
who went on in this vein, pointing out the faults in
the favorites of the day.

What strikes one now is, that he was correct in his
judgments. He undoubtedly was in search of truth,
but the sensitive authors whom he criticised never
forgave him.

Of poetry he contributed little to the Messenger,
and that little reached no high level. It has been
pointed out that he was under the influence of Cole
ridge, both in his critical and poetical effusions. He
always made a great show of knowledge, but his
learned notes were taken at second hand, and he
often made odd blunders.

On May 16, 1836, Poe was publicly married to
Virginia E. Clemm. His surety, Thomas W. Cle-

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 17

took oath that she was " of the full age of
twenty-one years." The minister who performed the
ceremony afterwards remembered the bride as seem
ing very young: she lacked four months of being
fourteen years old.

Mrs. Clemm proposed to keep a boarding-house.
Poe had incurred a debt of two hundred dollars for
furniture. But it was discovered that the house was
too small for more than one family, and the scheme
was abandoned. Poe borrowed one hundred dollars
on the strength of his increasing salary (it was to be
twenty dollars a week after November) and the pros
pects of the Messenger, which he declared was *' thriv
ing beyond all expectation.11

Suddenly, in January, 1837, Poe's connection with
the magazine ceased. A serial story, " Arthur Gor
don Pym,11 which had been begun in its columns was
broken off.

There can be no doubt as to what was the cause of
this abrupt change.

He was subject to more or less frequent fits of
intoxication, which, when they had passed, left him
weak and unfit for work.

Poe took his family to New York, where Mrs.
Clemm took boarders. He finished " The Narration
of Arther Gordon Pym of Nantucket,11 and it was
published by the Harpers ; but, though tales of the
sea were then popular, he made no profit from it.
Nor, in the face of the financial panic of that time,
did he succeed in finding remunerative work.

He borrowed money and went to Philadelphia,
where he was engaged to prepare a text-book on

1 8 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

Conchology. It was a palpable plagiarism in spite
of his defence of his methods.

During the same year he earned small sums by
stories contributed to the American Museum of Lit
erature and Arts of Baltimore, and later to the local
press of Philadelphia.

In July, 1839, ne became associate editor of Bur
ton's Gentleman's Magazine and American Monthly
Review, and the next year published a collection of
twenty-four tales in two volumes. ("Tales of the
Grotesque and Arabesque.") Three of these stories
are declared by Woodbury *« to mark the highest
reach of the romantic element in Poe's genius ; " but
the world had not yet awakened to an appreciation
of his greatness.

He was soon involved in a bitter quarrel with
William E. Burton, the proprietor and editor of the
magazine. Burton charged Poe with habits of intox
ication and with employing underhand measures
toward the establishment of a magazine of his own.

Poe declared that he had "abandoned every kind of
alcoholic drink," and that in four years he had allowed
himself only one deviation from habits of strict tem
perance. He called Burton "a blackguard and a
villain," and claimed that if he issued the prospectus
of the rival monthly, The Penn Magazine, it was
because Burton had advertised his magazine for sale
without giving Poe notice.

It is not known whether Griswold's charge that Poe
clandestinely availed himself of Burton's list of sub
scribers is correct.

Poe proposed to furnish in his Penn Magazine the

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 19

impress of his own individuality, such severity in
criticism as was consistent "with the calmest yet
strictest sense of justice," honest and fearless opin
ions, versatility, originality, and pungency of literary
pabulum without any "tincture of the buffoonery,
scurrility, or profanity, which are the blemish of some
of the most vigorous of the European prints," and
finally, perfection of mechanical execution.

An illness from which Poe suffered postponed the
issue of the magazine, and the Saturday Evening
Post of January 20, 1841, announced that the scheme
was abandoned and that Poe would take the editorial
chair of Graharis Magazine!

To this, during the months from April, 1841, till
June, 1842, he contributed "The Murders of the Rue
Morgue," " The Descent into the Maelstrom," and
many other stories, besides a succession of reviews
of American and foreign authors. The magazine,
which opened with a circulation of eight thousand,
acquired in a year and a quarter a circulation of forty
thousand ; but Poe still dreamed of his own venture,
and in spite of Graham's " unceasing civility and
real kindness," felt more and more disgusted with his
situation. He even hoped that on the strength of
having been at West Point he might obtain a govern
ment situation.

" I would be glad," he wrote, "to get almost any
appointment, even a five hundred dollar one, so that
I have something independent of letters for a sub
sistence. To coin one's brain into silver, at the nod

1 This was a new venture, due to the union of Burton's former
monthly with the Casket

20 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

of a master, is, to my thinking, the hardest task
in the world."

He lived with his girl wife and her mother " in a
pretty little rose-covered cottage on the outskirts of
Philadelphia." Mrs. Clemm, «* a masculine matron"
of fifty, received and spent Poe's wages, and was the
head of the household.

Virginia Poe, still under twenty-one, had a voice
of wonderful sweetness, and sang exquisitely to the
accompaniment of her harp or piano. One evening
she ruptured a blood vessel, and for six years her life
was a constant struggle with weakness.

The year after her death Poe wrote one of his most
pathetic letters, explaining how, during the protracted
agony of this terrible illness, undergoing again and
again the sorrow of leave-taking, while at each acces
sion of her disorder he ** loved her more dearly and
clung to her life with more desperate pertinacity,"
he became " insane with long intervals of horrible
sanity."

" During these fits of absolute unconsciousness,"
he says, " I drank — God only knows how often or
how much. As a matter of course, my enemies
referred the insanity to the drink, rather than the
drink to the insanity."

He had doubtless at this time begun to use opium.

In the spring of 1842 he lost his editorship of
Graham's Magazine, his position being taken by
Griswold, who afterwards wrote a libellous biography
of him.

A period of wretched poverty followed. Poe won
a prize of one hundred dollars for his famous story,

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 21

the " Gold Bug," but for most of his tales written
at this time he was poorly paid. Nor did he make
much money from his lectures, though he was favor
ably received both in Baltimore and Philadelphia.

It is interesting to know that as early as 1844 Poe
wrote to Lowell, advocating an International Copy-
Right Law. In the same letter he proposed that
" the elite of our men of letters" should each sub
scribe two hundred dollars to establish a monthly
journal, the chief aims of which should be " Inde
pendence, Truth, Originality." He could see no
reason why one hundred thousand copies should not
be circulated in one or two years. But all such
schemes fell through.

In April, 1844, Poe suddenly went to New York
with his sick wife. A letter to his mother-in-law
gives a pathetic picture of their journey and arrival
in the rain. " Sissy coughed none at all," he says.
He found a cheap boarding-house — "the cheapest
board he ever knew." And he adds, " I wish Kate
— meaning Catterina, the cat — could see it. She
would faint."

On getting settled, he tried to find profitable em
ployment, and soon published in The Sun his famous
" Balloon Hoax." He also occupied himself collect
ing and arranging materials for a Critical History of
American Literature, a work which he never finished.

In October, he obtained an editorial position on
N. P. Willis's Evening Mirror, and on the twenty-
ninth day of the January following, this paper pub
lished from advance sheets, Poe's " Raven."

Woodbury says : " ' The Raven ' became, in some

22 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

sort, a national bird, and the author, the most noto
rious American of the hour."

He soon appeared in New York as a lecturer, and
was highly commended by Willis. But his lecture,
largely made up of his old book reviews, was full of
savage criticisms, and " gained him a dozen or two
of waspish foes," as one said who heard him.

Within two months he quitted the Mirror and
joined Charles F. Briggs and John Bisco in the man
agement of the Broadway Journal. His hobby at
this time was plagiarism. Briggs thought it was best
to let him ride it to death, and gave him free rein.
His bitterest attack was upon Longfellow. He
charged that he had left out of " The Waif" all the
Americans who might be supposed to interfere with
the claims of the editor himself. He declared that
Longfellow had stolen some scenes of " The Spanish
Student" from " Politian." Longfellow charitably
attributed " the harshness of his criticisms" to " the
irritation of a sensitive nature, chafed by some indefi
nite sense of wrong."

During the first months of Poe's residence in New
York he conducted himself soberly, but gradually fell
back into his bad habits. Briggs discovered that he
was showy, superficial, and untrustworthy in his
learning, selfish and conceited in his behavior,
" utterly deficient of high motive."

Owing to business complications, Briggs withdrew
from the Journal. Poe, remaining in full charge
of it for a few months, with his third interest as pay,
took advantage of his position to make an "un
handsome allusion" to Briggs, who had not only

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 23

loaned him money " to pay his board and keep him
from being turned into the street,'1 but, out of pure
compassion had tried to hide his ill habits from
observation.

During the summer he visited Boston, and in
October, through Lowell's influence, he was nvited
to give a poem before the Boston Lyceum. Instead
of furnishing an original production, he palmed off
on the disappointed audience, the feeble effort of his
youth, " El Aaraaf." On the twenty-sixth day of the
same month he bought out Bisco's rights for a pro
missory note for fifty dollars indorsed by Horace
Greely, who subsequently was called upon to pay it
with the cost of its protest.

Lack of capital and inability to borrow caused the
suspension of the monthly in December. A few days
later, Wiley and Putnam, who had already issued a
collection of his best stories edited by Duyckinck,
brought out a volume of his verse under the title
" The Raven and Other Poems."

Poe occasionally mingled in the literary society of
New York, and there met Mrs. Elizabeth F. Ellet
and Mrs. Francis S. Osgood, both of whom conceived
a mild Platonic love for the romantic poet. Through
the interference of Mrs. Ellet, a scandal arose in con
sequence of Mrs. Osgood's letters to Poe, and the
acquaintance between the three poets was brought to
a sudden close.

In the mean time, Poe was publishing in Godey's
Lady's Book a series of papers, entitled " The Literati
of New York," made up of scraps of his projected
work on American literature. He distributed severe

24 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

criticism and generous praise, and while many of his
judgments have been sustained by posterity, the thin-
skinned " mediocrities," now forgotten, who then re
garded themselves as lights of the earth, were greatly
disturbed. Thomas Dunn English retorted in the
-tlumns of the Mirror, and was so scurrilous in his
abuse of Poe that the latter was not satisfied with a
disclaimer in the Philadelphia Saturday Gazette, but
sued the Mirror for libel, and obtained an award of
two hundred and twenty-five dollars.

Woodbury1 gives a remarkably fair estimate of
Foe's critical service, claiming that his claim to im
partiality, sincerity and integrity, if spoken at all, is
invalidated only by the praise that he gave to his
feminine friends.

He was, he says, " prejudiced here and partial there ; foolish
or interested or wrong-headed; carping, or flattering, or con
temptuous. Yet he was the first of his time to mark the limita
tions of the pioneer writers, such as Irving, Bryant, and Cooper,
and to foresee the future of the younger men who have been
mentioned ; he was, too, though he originated no criterion, the
first to take criticism from mere advertising, puffery and friend
ship, and submit it to the laws of literary art."

Poe removed to the village of Fordham in the
spring of 1846, where he lived in a little one-and-a-
half story house with only four rooms, perched on the
very top of Fordham Hill, and giving beautiful views
in every direction. Poe's own health was fatally
broken from overwork, disappointments, and poverty,
and from his indulgence in strong drink and opium.

1 In his admirable life of Poe, pp. 266-271.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 25

Once when Mrs. Mary Gove, whom Poe called "a
mesmerist, a Swedenborgian, a phrenologist, a
homceopathist, and a disciple of Priessnitz," went to
call upon them, she found Mrs. Poe suffering from
" the dreadful chills that accompany the hectic fever
of consumption." Wrapped in her husband's mili
tary overcoat, she lay on a straw bed with a snow-
white counterpane and sheets for its only clothing.
A large tortoise-shell cat snuggled to her bosom, to
keep her warm, while Poe held her hands and Mrs.
Clemm her feet.

Mrs. Gove, on returning to New York, bestirred
herself to bring aid. A subscription of sixty dollars
was sent to the sufferers. In December a public
appeal was made in the Express and in Willis's Home
Journal — a publicity which was extremely galling to
his sensitive pride.

Mrs. Poe died on January 3oth, 1847.

Poe himself was taken sick with brain fever, and
while half delirious he dictated the strange story of
his voyage to France, his duel, and his French novel.
Needless to say the details are wholly untrue.

On his recovery he published among other things
his remarkable poem, «' Ulalume," in the American
Review. This poem, says Woodbury, "marks the
extreme development of Poe's original genius."

Still living at Fordham, and trying to re-establish
his shattered health by early rising, moderate eating,
absolute temperance, and out-of-door exercise, he
wrote his prose poem, «« Eureka,"1 which he thought

1 George P. Putnam published the work in a volume of one hundred
and forty-three pages.

26 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

contained truths of more consequence than the dis
covery of gravitation. He had been interested in
astronomical subjects from his early youth in Rich
mond, where his guardian had a fine telescope. In
the hope of raising enough money to establish his
long projected magazine The Stylus, he read an essay
entitled " The Cosmogony of the Universe," as a
lecture in the Society Library. It was an abstract of
the book. But the weather was stormy, and only
about sixty people heard it. These were entranced.

In a journey made to Richmond in the summer of
1848 Poe met his old flame, Miss Royster, then a
well-to-do widow not averse to his attentions. He
was on the point of proposing to her, when he
received from Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman of Provi
dence a communication which altered all his plans.

He had for several years indulged an ideal passion
for this brilliant but eccentric poet, whose affinity, he
felt, corresponded with his own.

He returned to the North, sought a personal intro
duction to her, and after two days' acquaintance
offered himself to her. She was moved to pity for
him, and felt that she was called to save him ; but
Poe's habits, related to her by friends, caused her to
hesitate.

At Lowell, where he went to lecture, he made the
acquaintance of a charming family, and apparently
went almost as far as he could with decency, in his
acquaintance with the lady known as " Annie," in his
correspondence.

Believing that Mrs. Whitman would not accept him,
he bought two ounces of laudanum at Boston, and

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 27

attempted suicide. In November he was in Provi
dence again, and urged Mrs. Whitman to marry him
at once and return to New York with him.

In spite of his extraordinary behavior she consented
to a conditional engagement.

In December he went again to Providence to give
a lecture before the Franklin Lyceum, where he had
a large audience. Again he pleaded with Mrs.
Whitman, but even with this happiness at stake, he
drank at the public bar and called at her house while
intoxicated.

Mrs. Whitman decided to break off the match, and
after she had returned to him certain of his papers,
" utterly worn out and exhausted by the mental con
flicts and responsibilities " she had undergone, she
drenched her handkerchief with ether and threw herself
on a sofa, hoping to lose herself in utter unconscious
ness.

Her last words spoken to him at his passionate
appeal were, " I love you."

He returned to Fordham " so, so happy," by reason
of his rupture with Mrs. Whitman — and devoted
himself to literary work. His prospects in this
respect were flattering. All the American magazines
were open to him, and, if he had known it, his fame
in France was already wide spread.

On February 6, 1849, ne finished his second most
famous poem, " The Bells,1' which had probably been
in his mind for some time.

He also wrote a nun.ber of his most characteristic
pieces, but several of the journals in which they were
published either failed or stopped payment, and again

28 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

he was overwhelmed with disappointment. A deep
melancholy settled upon him. In May he visited his
Lowell friends, and then returned to New York on
his way to the South, where he still hoped to establish
his Stylus.

Mrs. Clemm, whose devotion to him was more than
motherly, accompanied him to the steamboat, and he
promised her to be " good " while he was away.

Nevertheless, he had an attack of delirium tremens
at Philadelphia ! At Richmond, where he was idol
ized, he spent three of the happiest months of his life.

He was described as erect in stature, cold, impas
sive, almost haughty, with broad brow, black, curly
hair, pallid, care-worn, haggard features, large steel-
gray eyes, expanding and contracting, and with most
exquisite manners.

Twice during these months he suffered from illness
due to his intoxication, and was told that if he yielded
again it would prove fatal.

He also offered himself to Mrs. Shelton, who
undoubtedly accepted him. He started north to make
arrangements for the wedding, and to bring Mrs.
Clemm back to Richmond.

All that is definitely known of his further move
ments is that he was found on Wednesday, October
3d, 1849, at one of the voting precincts of Baltimore
— Ryan's rum-shop — " rather the worse for wear.11

His old friend Dr. J. E. Snodgrass, to whom he
referred, was called, and had him taken to the Wash
ington Hospital. He was then unconscious. In
the only few moments of tranquillity, he was unable
to give coherent answers to questions. But he

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 29

declared that he had a wife in Richmond, and that
the " best thing his best friend could do would be
to blow his brains out with a pistol," that when he
beheld his degradation, he was ready to sink into
the earth.

He then relapsed into delirium, and his last words
were, " Lord help my poor soul."

On Sunday at five o'clock he died.

A few friends followed his body to the grave. It
was not till long after his death that the world awoke
to the greatness of the genius which it had lost.

N. H. D.

THE POETIC PRINCIPLE.

THE POETIC PRINCIPLE.

IN speaking of the poetic principle, I have no
design to be either thorough or profound. While
discussing, very much at random, the essentiality of
what we call Poetry, my principal purpose will be to
cite for consideration some few of those minor Eng
lish or American poems which best suit my own taste,
or which, upon my own fancy, have left the most
definite impression. By " minor poems " I mean, of
course, poems of little length. And here, in the
beginning, permit me to say a few words in regard to
a somewhat peculiar principle, which, whether right
fully or wrongfully, has always had its influence in
my own critical estimate of the poem. I hold that
a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the
phrase " a long poem " is simply a flat contradiction
in terms.

1 need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its
title only inasmuch as it excites by elevating the soul.
The value of the poem is in the ratio of this elevating
excitement. But all excitements are, through a
psychal necessity, transient. That degree of excite
ment which would entitle a poem to be so called at
all cannot be sustained throughout a composition of

33

34 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE.

any great length. After the lapse of half an hour,
at the very utmost, it flags, fails, a revulsion ensues ;
and then the poem is, in effect and in fact, no longer
such.

There are, no doubt, many who have found diffi
culty in reconciling the critical dictum that the
" Paradise Lost " is to be devoutly admired through
out with the absolute impossibility of maintaining for
it, during perusal, the amount of enthusiasm which
that critical dictum would demand. This great work,
in fact, is to be regarded as poetical only when,
losing sight of that vital requisite in all works of art,
unity, we view it merely as a series of minor poems.
If, to preserve its unity, — its totality of effect or
impression, — we read it (as would be necessary) at
a single sitting, the -result is but a constant alterna
tion of excitement and depression. After a passage
of what we feel to be true poetry, there follows,
inevitably, a passage of platitude which no critical
prejudgment can force us to admire ; but if, upon
completing the work, we read it again, omitting the
first book, — that is to say, commencing with the
second, — we shall be surprised at now finding that
admirable which we before condemned, that damna
ble which we had previously so much admired. It
follows from all this that the ultimate, aggregate, or
absolute effect of even the best epic under the sun is
a nullity : and this is precisely the fact.

In regard to the Iliad, we have, if not positive
proof, at least very good reason, for believing it
intended as a series of lyrics ; but granting the epic
intention, I can only say that the work is based in an

THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 35

imperfect sense of art. The modern epic is of the
supposititious ancient model ; but an inconsiderate
and blindfold imitation. But the days of these
artistic anomalies are over. If, at any time, any very
long poem were popular in reality, — which I doubt,
— it is at least clear that no very long poem will ever
be popular again.

That the extent of a poetical work is, ceteris part-
bits, the measure of its merit, seems undoubtedly,
when we thus state it, a proposition sufficiently
absurd ; yet we are indebted for it to the Quarterly
Reviews. Surely there can be nothing in mere size,
abstractly considered, there can be nothing in mere
bulk, so far as a volume is concerned, which has so
continuously elicited admiration from these saturnine
pamphlets ! A mountain, to be sure, by the mere
sentiment of physical magnitude which it conveys,
does impress us with a sense of the sublime ; but no
man is impressed after this fashion by the material
grandeur of even "The Columbiad." Even the
quarterlies have not instructed us to be so impressed
by it. As yet they have not insisted on our esti
mating Lamartine by the cubic foot, or Pollok by
the pound ; but what else are we to infer from their
continually prating about " sustained effort"? If by
"sustained effort "any little gentleman has accom
plished an epic, let us frankly commend him for the
effort, — if this indeed be a thing commendable, —
but let us forbear praising the epic on the effort's
account.

It is to be hoped that common-sense, in the time to
come, will prefer deciding upon a work of art rather

36 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE.

by the impression it makes, by the effect it produces,
than by the time it took to produce the effect, or by
the amount of "sustained effort1' which had been
found necessary in effecting the impression. The
fact is, that perseverance is one thing and genius
quite another, nor ran all the quarterlies in Christen
dom confound them. By and by this proposition,
with many which I have been just urging, will be
received as self-evident. In the mean time, by being
generally condemned as falsities, they will not be
essentially damaged as truths.

On the other hand, it is clear that a poem may be
improperly brief. Undue brevity degenerates into
mere epigrammatism. A very short poem, while
now and then producing a brilliant or vivid, never
produces a profound or enduring, effect. There must
be the steady pressing down of the stamp upon the
wax. De Beranger has wrought innumerable things,
pungent and spirit-stirring ; but, in general, they have
been too imponderous to stamp themselves deeply
into the public attention ; and thus, as so many
feathers of fancy, have been blown aloft only to be
whistled down the wind.

A remarkable instance of the effect of undue
brevity in depressing a poem — in keeping it out
of the popular view — is afforded by the following
exquisite little serenade : —

I arise from dreams of thee

In the first sweet sleep of night,

When the winds are breathing low
And the stars are shining bright.

THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 37

I arise from dreams of thee,

And a spirit in my feet
Has led me — who knows how ? —

To thy chamber-window, sweet !

The wandering airs they faint

On the dark, the silent stream ;
The champak odors fail

Like sweet thoughts in a dream ;
The nightingale's complaint,

It dies upon her heart,
As I must die on thine,

Oh, beloved, as thou art!

Oh, lift me from the grass!

I die, I faint, I fail !
Let thy love in kisses rain

On my lips and eyelids pale.
My cheek is cold and white, alas !

My heart beats loud and fast :
Oh, press it close to thine again,

Where it will break at last !

Very few, perhaps, are familiar with these lines,
yet no less a poet than Shelley is their author. Their
warm yet delicate and ethereal imagination will be
appreciated by all ; but by none so thoroughly as by
him who has himself arisen from sweet dreams of one
beloved to bathe in the aromatic air of a southern
midsummer night.

One of the finest poems by Willis — the very best,
in my opinion, which he has ever written — has, no

38 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE.

doubt through this same defect of undue brevity,
been kept back from its proper position, not less in
the critical than in the popular view.

The shadows lay along Broadway,

'Twas near the twilight tide,
And slowly there a lady fair

Was walking in her pride.
Alone walked she, but viewlessly

Walked spirits at her side.

Peace charmed the street beneath her feet,

And Honor charmed the air,
And all astir looked kind on her,

And called her good as fair ;
For all God ever gave to her

She kept with chary care.

She kept with care her beauties rare

From lovers warm and true,
For her heart was cold to all but gold,

And the rich came not to woo :
But honored well are charms to sell

If priests the selling do.

Now walking there was one more fair, —

A slight girl, lily-pale ;
And she had unseen company

To make the spirit quail :
'Twixt Want and Scorn she walked forlorn,

And nothing could avail.

THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 39

No mercy now can clear her brow

For this world's peace to pray ;
For, as love's wild prayer dissolved in air,

Her woman's heart gave way ! —
But the sin forgiven by Christ in heaven

By man is cursed alway !

In this composition we find it difficult to recognize
the Willis who has written so many mere " verses of
society." The lines are not only richly ideal, but
full of energy, while they breathe an earnestness, an
evident sincerity of sentiment, for which we look in
vain throughout all the other works of this author.

While the epic mania — while the idea that to
merit, in poetry, prolixity is indispensable — has, for
some years past, been gradually dying out of the
public mind by mere dint of its own absurdity, we
find it succeeded by a heresy too palpably false to be
long tolerated, but one which, in the brief period it
has already endured, may be said to have accom
plished more in the corruption of our poetical litera
ture than all its other enemies combined. I allude
to the heresy of The Didactic. It has been assumed,
tacitly and avowedly, directly and indirectly, that the
ultimate object of all poetry is truth. Every poem,
it is said, should inculcate a moral ; and by this moral
is the poetical merit of the work to be adjudged. We
Americans, especially, have patronized this happy
idea ; and we Bostonians, very especially, have devel
oped it in full. We have taken it into our heads that
to write a poem simply for the poem's sake, and to
acknowledge such to have been our design, would be

40 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE.

to confess ourselves radically wanting in the true
poetic dignity and force ; but the simple fact is, that,
would we but permit ourselves to look into our own
souls, we should immediately there discover that
under the sun there neither exists nor can exist any
work more thoroughly dignified, more supremely
noble, than this very poem ; this poem per se ; this
poem which is a poem and nothing more ; this poem
written solely for the poem's sake.

With as deep a reverence for the True as ever in
spired the bosom of man, I would nevertheless limit,
in some measure, its modes of inculcation. I would
limit, to enforce them. I would not enfeeble them
by dissipation. The demands of Truth are severe.
She has no sympathy with the myrtles. All that
which is so indispensable in Song is precisely all.
that with which she has nothing whatever to do. It
is but making her a flaunting paradox to wreathe her
in gems and flowers. In enforcing a truth, we need
severity rather than efflorescence of language. We
must be simple, precise, terse ; we must be cool, calm,
unimpassioned ; in a word, we must be in that mood
which, as nearly as possible, is the exact converse of
the poetical. He must be blind indeed who does not
perceive the radical and chasmal differences between
the truthful and the poetical modes of inculcation.
He must be theory-mad beyond redemption who, in
spite of these differences, shall still persist in attempt
ing to reconcile the obstinate oils and waters of
Poetry and Truth.

Dividing the world of mind into its three most
immediately obvious distinctions, we have the Pure

THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 4.

Intellect, Taste, and the Moral Sense. I place Taste
in the middle, because it is just this position which,
in the mind, it occupies. It holds intimate relations
with either extreme, but from the Moral Sense is sep
arated by so faint a difference that Aristotle has not
hesitated to place some of its operations among the
virtues themselves. Nevertheless, we find the offices
of the trio marked with a sufficient distinction. Just
as the Intellect concerns itself with Truth, so Taste
informs us of the Beautiful, while the Moral Sense is
regardful of Duty. Of this latter, while Conscience
teaches the obligation, and Reason the expediency,
Taste contents herself with displaying the charms ;
waging war upon Vice solely on the ground of her
deformity, her disproportion, her animosity to the
fitting, to the appropriate, to the harmonious, — in a
word, to Beauty.

An immortal instinct, deep within the spirit of man,
is thus, plainly, a sense of the Beautiful. This it is
which administers to his delight in the manifold forms
and sounds and odors and sentiments amid which he
exists. And just as the lily is repeated in the lake,
or the eyes of Amaryllis in the mirror, so is the mere
oral or written repetition of these forms and sounds
and colors and odors and sentiments a duplicate
source of delight. But this mere repetition is not
poetry. He who shall simply sing, with however
glowing enthusiasm or with however vivid a truth of
description, of the sights and sounds and odors and
colors and sentiments which greet him in common
with all mankind, — he, I say, has yet failed to prove
his divine title. There is still a something in the

42 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE.

distance which he has been unable to attain. We
have still a thirst unquenchable, to allay which he has
not shown us the crystal springs. This thirst belongs
to the immortality of man. It is at once a conse
quence and an indication of his perennial existence.
It is the desire of the moth for the star. It is no
mere appreciation of the beauty before us, but a wild
effort to reach the beauty above. Inspired by an
ecstatic prescience of the glories beyond the grave,
we struggle, by multiform combinations among the
things and thoughts of time, to attain a portion of
that loveliness whose very elements, perhaps, apper
tain to eternity alone. ,, And thus when by poetry —
or when by music, the most entrancing of the poetic
moods — we find ourselves melted into tears, we weep
then, not, as the Abbate Gravina supposes, through
excess of pleasure, but through a certain petulant,
impatient sorrow, at our inability to grasp now,
wholly, here on earth, at once and forever, those
divine and rapturous joys, of which through the poem
or through the music, we attain to but brief and
indeterminate glimpses.

The struggle to apprehend the supernal loveliness,
this struggle, on the part of souls fittingly consti
tuted, has given to the world all that which it (the
world) has ever been enabled at once to understand
and to feel as poetic.

The poetic sentiment, of course, may develop itself
in various modes, — in painting, in sculpture, in
architecture, in the dance, very especially in music,
and very peculiarly, and with a wide field, in the
composition of the landscape garden. Our present

THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 43

theme, however, has regard only to its manifestation
in words. And here let me speak briefly on the topic
of rhythm. Contenting myself with the certainty
that music, in its various modes of metre, rhythm,
and rhyme, is of so vast a moment in poetry as never
to be wisely rejected, is so vitally important an ad
junct that he is simply silly who declines its assist
ance, I will not now pause to maintain its absolute
essentiality. It is in music, perhaps, that the soul
most nearly attains the great end for which, when
inspired by the poetic sentiment, it struggles, — the
creation of supernal beauty. It may be, indeed, that
here this sublime end is, now and then, attained, in
fact. We are often made to feel, with a shivering
delight, that from an earthly harp are stricken notes
which cannot have been unfamiliar to the angels.
And thus there can be little doubt that with the
intellect or with the conscience, it has only collateral
relations. Unless incidentally, it has no concern
whatever either with Duty or with Truth.

A few words, however, in explanation. That
pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most
elevating, and the most intense, is derived, I main
tain, from the contemplation of the Beautiful. In
the contemplation of Beauty, we alone find it possible
to attain this pleasurable elevation or excitement of
the soul which we recognize as the poetic sentiment,
and which is so easily distinguished from Truth,
which is the satisfaction of the Reason, or from
Passion, which is the excitement of the heart. I
make Beauty, therefore, — using the word as inclusive
of the sublime, — I make Beauty the province of the

44 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE.

poem, simply because it is an obvious rule of Art that
effects should be made to spring as directly as possi
ble from their causes, — no one as yet having been
weak enough to deny that the peculiar elevation in
question is at least most readily attainable in the
poem. It by no means follows, however, that the in
citements of Passion or the precepts of Duty, or even
the lessons of Truth, may not be introduced into a
poem, and with advantage ; for they may subserve,
incidentally, in various ways, the general purposes
of the work : but the true artist will always contrive
to tone them down in proper subjection to that
Beauty which is the atmosphere and the real essence-
of the poem.

I cannot better introduce the few poems which I
shall present for your consideration than by the cita
tion of the proem to Mr. Longfellow's " Waif."

The day is done, and the darkness

Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward

From an eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the village

Gleam through the rain and the mist,

And a feeling of sadness conies o'er me
That my soul can not resist, —

A feeling of sadness and longing,

That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only

As the mist resembles rain.

THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 45

Come, read to me some poem,

Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,

And banish the thoughts of day.

Not from the grand old masters,

Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo

Through the corridors of Time ;

For, like strains of martial music,

Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life's endless toil and endeavor ;

And to-night I long for rest.

Read from some humbler poet,

Whose songs gushed from his heart

As showers from the clouds of summer
Or tears from the eyelids start ;

Who, through long days of labor

And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music

Of wonderful melodies.

Such songs have power to quiet

The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction

That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume

The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet

The beauty of thy voice.

46 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE.

And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares that infest the day

Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs
And as silently steal away.

With no great range of imagination, these lines
have been justly admired for their delicacy of expres
sion. Some of the images are very effective. Noth
ing can be better than

The bards sublime,

Whose distant footsteps echo
Down the corridors of Time.

The idea of the last quartrain is also very effective.
The poem on the whole, however, is chiefly to be
admired for the graceful insouciance of its metre, so
well in accordance with the character of the senti
ments, and especially for the ease of the general
manner. This " ease,'1 or naturalness, in a literary
style, it has long been the fashion to regard as ease
in appearance alone, — as a point of really difficult
attainment. But not so : a natural manner is diffi
cult only to him who should never meddle with it, —
to the unnatural. It is but the result of writing with
the understanding, or with the instinct, that the tone,
in composition, should always be that which the
mass of mankind would adopt, and must perpetually
vary, of course, with the occasion. The author who,
after the fashion of The North American Review,
should be, upon all occasions, merely "quiet," must
necessarily, upon many occasions, be simply silly or

THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 47

stupid ; and has no more right to be considered
"easy11 or " natural,11 than a cockney exquisite, or
than the sleeping Beauty in the waxworks.

Among the minor poems of Bryant, none has so
much impressed me as the one which he entitles
" June.11 I quote only a portion of it : —

There, through the long, long summer hours,

The golden light should lie,
And thick young herbs and groups of flowers

Stand in their beauty by.
The oriole should build and tell
His love-tale close beside my cell ;

The idle butterfly

Should rest him there, and there be heard
The housewife-bee and humming bird.

And what if cheerful shouts, at noon,

Come, from the village sent,
Or songs of maids, beneath the moon,

With fairy laughter blent?
And what if, in the evening light,
Betrothed lovers walk in sight

Of my low monument?
I would the lovely scene around
Might know no sadder sight nor sound.

I know, I know I should not see

The season's glorious show,
Nor would its brightness shine for me,

Nor its wild music flow;

48 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE.

But if around my place of sleep,

The friends I love should come to weep,

They might not haste to go.
Soft airs, and song, and light, and bloom,
Should keep them lingering by my tomb.

These to their softened hearts should bear
The thought of what has been,

And speak of one who cannot share
The gladness of the scene ;

Whose part in all the pomp that fills

The circuit of the summer hills,
Is — that his grave is green ;

And deeply would their hearts rejoice

To hear again his living voice.

The rhythmical flow here is even voluptuous, —
nothing could be more melodious. The poem has
always affected me in a remarkable manner. The
intense melancholy which seems to well up, perforce,
to the surface of all the poet's cheerful sayings about
his grave, we find thrilling us to the soul, while there
is the truest poetic elevation in the thrill. The
impression left is one of a pleasurable sadness. And
if, in the remaining compositions which I shall intro
duce to you, there be more or less of a similar tone
always apparent, let me remind you that (how or why
we know not) this certain taint of sadness is insepara
bly connected with all the higher manifestations of
true beauty. It is, nevertheless,

THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 49

A feeling of sadness and longing

That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only

As the mist resembles the rain.

The taint of which I speak is clearly perceptible
even in a poem so full of brilliancy and spirit as the
" Health" of Edward Coate Pinckney : —

I fill this cup to one made up

Of loveliness alone,
A woman, of her gentle sex

The seeming paragon ;
To whom the better elements

And kindly stars have given
A form so fair, that, like the air

Tis less of earth than heaven.

Her every tone is musics own,

Like those of morning birds,
And something more than melody

Dwells ever in her words ;
The coinage of her heart are they,

And from her lips each flows
As one may see the burden?d bee

Forth issue from the rose.

Affections are as thoughts to her,

The measures of her hours ;
Her feelings have the fragrancy,

The freshness of young flowers ;

50 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE.

And lovely passions, changing oft,

So fill her, she appears
The image of themselves by turns, —

The idol of past years !

Of her bright face one glance will trace

A picture on the brain,
And of her voice in echoing hearts

A sound must long remain ;
But memory, such as mine of her,

So very much endears,
When death is nigh my latest sigh

Will not be life's, but hers.

I fiird this cup to one made up

Of loveliness alone, —
A woman, of her gentle sex

The seeming paragon.
Her health ! and would on earth there stood

Some more of such a frame,
That life might be all poetry,

And weariness a name.

It was the misfortune of Mr. Pinckney to have been
born too far south. Had he been a New-Englander,
it is probable that he would have been ranked as the
first of American lyrists by that magnanimous cabal
which has so long controlled the destinies of American
Letters in conducting the thing called The North
American Review. The poem just cited is especially
beautiful ; but the poetic elevation which it induces,
we must refer chiefly to our sympathy in the poet's

THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 51

enthusiasm. We pardon his hyperboles for the
evident earnestness with which they are uttered.

It was by no means my design, however, to expa
tiate upon the merits of what I should read you.
These will necessarily speak for themselves. Boc-
calini, in his " Advertisements from Parnassus," tells
us that Zoilus once presented Apollo a very caustic
criticism upon a very admirable book, whereupon
the god asked him for the beauties of the work. He
replied that he only busied himself about the errors.
On hearing this, Apollo, handing him a sack of
unwinnowed wheat, bade him pick out all the chaff
for his reward.

Now this fable answers very well as a hit at the
critics ; but I am by no means sure that the god was
in the right. I am by no means certain that the
true limits of the critical duty are not grossly mis
understood. Excellence, in a poem especially, may
be considered in the light of an axiom, which need
only be properly put to become self-evident. It is
not excellence if it require to be demonstrated as
such : and thus, to point out too particularly the
merits of a work of art is to admit that they are not
merits altogether.

Among the " Melodies" of Thomas Moore is one
whose distinguished character as a poem proper
seems to have been singularly left out of view. I
allude to his lines beginning "Come, rest in this
bosom." The intense energy of their expression is
not surpassed by anything in Byron. There are two
of the lines in which a sentiment is conveyed that
embodies the all in all of the divine passion of love,

52 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE.

— a sentiment which, perhaps, has found its echo in
more and in more passionate human hearts, than any
other single sentiment ever embodied in words : —

Come, rest in this bosom, my own stricken deer,
Though the herd have fled from thee, thy home is

still here ;

Here still is the smile that no cloud can o'ercast,
And a heart and a hand all thy own to the last.

Oh, what was love made for, if 'tis not the same
Through joy and through torment, through glory and

shame,

I know not, I ask not, if guilt's in that heart :
I but know that I love thee, whatever thou art.

Thou hast call'd me thy angel in moments of bliss,
And thy angel Til be 'mid the horrors of this, —
Through the furnace, unshrinking, thy steps to

pursue,
And shield thee, and save thee, — or perish there,

too!

It has been the fashion of late days to deny Moore
imagination, while granting him fancy, — a distinc
tion originating with Coleridge, than whom no man
more fully comprehended the great powers of Moore.
The fact is that the fancy of this poet so far predom
inates over all his other faculties, and over the fancy
of all other men, as to have induced, very naturally,
the idea that he is fanciful only. But never was there
a greater mistake ; never was a grosser wrong done
the fame of a true poet. In the compass of the

THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 53

English language I can call to mind no poem more
profoundly — more weirdly — imaginative, in the best
sense, than the lines commencing " I would I were by
that dim lake," which are the composition of Thomas
Moore. I regret that I am unable to remember them.
One of the noblest — and, speaking of fancy, one
of the most singularly fanciful of modern poets —
was Thomas Hood. His "Fair Ines"had always,
for me, an inexpressible charm : —

Oh, saw ye not fair Ines?

She's gone into the West,
To dazzle when the sun is down,

And rob the world of rest.
She took our daylight with her,

The smiles that we love best,
With morning blushes on her cheek

And pearls upon her breast.

Oh, turn again, fair Ines,

Before the fall of night,
For fear the moon should shine alone,

And stars unrivalPd bright :
And blessed will the lover be

That walks beneath their light,
And breathes the love against thy cheek

I dare not even write !

Would I had been, fair Ines,

That gallant cavalier
Who rode so gayly by thy side,

And whispered thee so near !

54 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE.

Were there no bonny dames at home,

Or no true lovers here,
That he should cross the seas to win

The dearest of the dear?

I saw thee, lovely Ines,

Descend along the shore,
With a band of noble gentlemen,

And banners wav'd before ;
And gentle youth and maidens gay,

And snowy plumes they wore ;
It would have been a beauteous dream,—

If it had been no more !

Alas, alas, fair Ines !

She went away with song,
With Music waiting on her steps,

And shoutings of the throng ;
But some were sad and felt no mirth,

But only Music's wrong,
In sounds that sang Farewell, FarewellP

To her you've lov'd so long.

Farewell, farewell, fair Ines !

That vessel never bore
So fair a lady on its deck,

Nor danced so light before.
Alas for pleasure on the sea

And sorrow on the shore !
The smile that blest one lover's heart

Has broken many more !

THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 55

"The Haunted House," by the same author, is
one of the truest poems ever written, one of the
truest i one of the most unexceptionable, one of the
most thoroughly artistic, both in its theme and in
its execution. It is, moreover, powerfully ideal,
imaginative. I regret that its length renders it
unsuitable for the purposes of this Lecture. In place
of it, permit me to offer the universally appreciated
'* Bridge of Sighs : " —

One more Unfortunate,

Weary of breath,
Rashly importunate,

Gone to her death !

Take her up tenderly,

Lift her with care, —
Fashion'd so slenderly,

Young, and so fair!

Look at her garments,
Clinging like cerements, —
Whilst the wave constantly

Drips from her clothing.
Take her up instantly, —

Loving, not loathing.

Touch her not scornfully,
Think of her mournfully,

Gently and humanly ;
Not of the stains of her,
All that remains of her

Now, is pure womanly.

$6 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE.

Make no deep scrutiny
Into her mutiny,

Rash and undutiful ;
Past all dishonor,
Death has left on her

Only the beautiful.

Still, for all slips of hers,

One of Eve's family,
Wipe those poor lips of hers,

Oozing so clammily ;
Loop up her tresses

Escaped from the comb,
Her fair auburn tresses,
Whilst wonderment guesses

Where was her home ?

Who was her father?
Who was her mother?
Had she a sister?

Had she a brother?
Or was there a dearer one
Still, and a nearer one

Yet, than all other?

Alas, for the rarity
Of Christian charity

Under the sun !
Oh, it was pitiful !
Near a whole city full,

Home she had none.

THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 57

Sisterly, brotherly,
Fatherly, motherly

Feelings had changed ;
Love, by harsh evidence,
Thrown from its eminence;
Even God's providence

Seeming estranged.

Where the lamps quiver
So far in the river,

With many a light
From window and casement,
From garret to basement,
She stood, with amazement,

Houseless by night.

The bleak wind of March

Made her tremble and shiver
But net the dark arch,

Or the black flowing river:
Mad from life's history,
Glad to death's mystery

Swift to be hurl'd, —
Any where, any where

Out of the world !

In she plunged boldly,
No matter how coldly

The rough river ran, —
Over the brink of it,
Picture it, think of it,

Dissolute man !
Lave in it, drink of it,

Ther>, if you can !

5 8 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE.

Take her up tenderly,

Lift her with care, —
Fashion'd so slenderly,

Young, and so fair !

Ere her limbs frigidly
Stiffen too rigidly,

Decently, — kindly, —
Smooth and compose them ;
And her eyes, close them,

Staring so blindly !

Dreadfully staring

Through muddy impurity,

As when with the daring

Last look of despairing
Fixed on futurity.

Perishing gloomily,
Spurred by contumely,
Cold inhumanity
Burning insanity

Into her rest.
Cross her hands humbly,
As if praying dumbly,

Over her breast !
Owning her weakness,

Her evil behavior,
And leaving, with meekness,

Her sins to her Saviour !

The vigor of this poem is no less remarkable than
its pathos. The versification, although carrying the

THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 59

fanciful to the very verge of the fantastic, is never
theless admirably adapted to the wild insanity which
is the thesis of the poem.

Among the minor poems of Lord Byron is one
which has never received from the critics the praise
which it undoubtedly deserves : —

Though the day of my destiny's over,

And the star of my fate hath declined,
Thy soft heart refused to discover

The faults which so many could find ;
Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted,

It shrunk not to share it with me,
And the love which my spirit hath painted

It never hath found but in thee.

Then when Nature around me is smiling,

The last smile which answers to mine,
I do not believe in beguiling,

Because it reminds me of thine ;
And when winds are at war with the ocean,

As the breasts I believed in with me,
If their billows excite an emotion,

It is that they bear me from thee.

Though the rock of my last hope is shivered,

And its fragments are sunk in the wave,
Though I feel that my soul is delivered

To pain, — it shall not be its slave.
There is many a pang to pursue me :

They may crush, but they shall not contemn ;
They may torture, but shall not subdue me :

Tis of thee that I think, — not of them.

60 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE.

Though human, thou didst not deceive me;

Though woman, thou didst not forsake ;
Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me ;

Though slandered, thou never couldst shake:
Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me ;

Though parted, it was not to fly ;
Though watchful, 'twas not to defame me ;

Nor mute, that the world might belie.

Yet I blame not the world, nor despise it,

Nor the war of the many with one :
If my soul was not fitted to prize it,

'Twas folly not sooner to shun ;
And if dearly that error hath cost me,

And more than I once could foresee,
I have found that, whatever it lost me,

It could not deprive me of thee.

From the wreck of the past, which hath perished,

Thus much I at least may recall,
It hath taught me that which I most cherished,

Deserved to be dearest of all :
In the desert a fountain is springing,

In the wide waste there still is a tree,
And a bird in the solitude singing,

Which speaks to my spirit of thee.

Although the rhythm, here, is one of the most
difficult, the versification could scarcely be improved.
No nobler theme ever engaged the pen of poet. It
is the soul-elevating idea that no man can consider
himself entitled to complain of fate, while in his

THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 6 1

adveisity he still retains the unwavering love oi
woman.

From Alfred Tennyson — although in perfect sin
cerity I regard him as the noblest poet that ever lived
— I have left myself time to cite only a very brief
specimen. I call him and think him the noblest of
poets, — not because the impressions he produces
are, at all times, the most profound ; not because the
poetical excitement which he induces is, at all times,
the most intense ; but because it is, at all times, the
most ethereal, — in other words, the most elevating
and the most pure. No poet is so little of the earth,
earthy. What I am about to read is from his last
long poem, " The Princess " : —

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean!
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge, —
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square, —
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

62 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE.

Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd
On lips that are for others ; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret.
Oh, Death in Life ! the days that are no more.

Thus, although in a very cursory and imperfect
manner, I have endeavored to convey to you my
conception of the Poetic Principle. It has been my
purpose to suggest that, while this principle itself is,
strictly and simply, the human aspiration for supernal
beauty, the manifestation of the principle is always
found in an elevating excitement of the soul, quite
independent of that passion which is the intoxication
of the heart, or of that truth which is the satisfaction
of the reason ; for, in regard to passion, alas ! its
tendency is to degrade rather than to elevate the
soul. Love, on the contrary, — Love, the true, the
divine Eros, the Uranian as distinguished from
the Dionaean Venus, — is unquestionably the purest
and truest of all poetical themes. And in regard to
Truth, if, to be sure, through the attainment of a
truth we are led to perceive a harmony where none
was apparent before, we experience at once the true
poetical effect ; but this effect is referrible to the
harmony alone, and not in the least degree to
the truth which merely served to render the harmony
manifest.

We shall reach, however, more immediately a dis
tinct conception of what the true poetry is by mere
reference to a few of the simple elements which
induce in the poet himself the true poetical effect.

THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. 63

He recognizes the ambrosia which nourishes his soul,
in the bright orbs that shine in Heaven, in the volutes
of the flower, in the clustering of low shrubberies, in
the waving of the grain-fields, in the slanting of tall
Eastern trees, in the blue distance of mountains, in
the grouping of clouds, in the twinkling of half-
hidden brooks, in the gleaming of silver rivers, in
the repose of sequestered lakes, in the star-mirroring
depths of lonely wells. He perceives it in the songs
of birds, in the harp of y£olus, in the sighing of the
night-wind, in the repining voice of the forest, in
the surf that complains to the shore, in the fresh
breath of the woods, in the scent of the violet, in the
voluptuous perfume of the hyacinth, in the suggestive
odor that comes to him, at eventide, from far-distant,
undiscovered islands, over dim oceans, illimitable and
unexplored. He owns it in all noble thoughts, in all
unworldly motives, in all holy impulses, in all chival
rous, generous, and self-sacrificing deeds. He feels
it in the beauty of woman, — in the grace of her step,
in the lustre of her eye, in the melody of her voice,
in her soft laughter, in her sigh, in the harmony of
the rustling of her robe.i. He deeply feels it in her
winning endearments, in her burning enthusiasms, in
her gentle charities, in her meek and devotional
endurances ; but above all — ah, far above all ! — he
kneels to it, he worships it in the faith, in the purity,
in the strength, in the altogether divine majesty of
her love.

Let me conclude by the recitation of yet another
brief poem, — one very different in character from
any that I have before quoted. It is by Motherwell,

64 THE POETIC PRINCIPLE.

and is called " The Song of the Cavalier." With
our modern and altogether rational ideas of the ab
surdity and impiety of warfare, we are not precisely
in that frame of mind best adapted to sympathize
with the sentiments, and thus to appreciate the real
excellence of the poem. To do this fully, we must
identify ourselves, in fancy, with the soul of the old
cavalier.

Then mounte, then mounte, brave gallants all,

And don your helmes amaine !
Deathe's couriers, Fame and Honour, call

Us to the field againe.
No shrewish teares shall fill our eye

When the sword-hilt's in our hand ;
Heart-whole well part, and no whit sighe

For the fayrest of the land.
Let piping swaine and craven wight

Thus weepe and puling crye :
Our business is like men to fight,

And hero-like to die.

POEMS,

POEMS.

THE RAVEN.

ONCE upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak

and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten

lore, —
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there

came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, — rapping at my

chamber door.
" Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my

chamber door, —

Only this, and nothing more."

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak

December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost

upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow ; — vainly I had sought

to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow, — sorrow for the

lost Lenore, —
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels

name Lenore, —

Nameless here for evermore.
67

68 THE RAVEN.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple

curtain
Thrilled me — rilled me — with fantastic terrors never

felt before ;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood

repeating
" 'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber

door, —
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber

door.

This it is, and nothing more."

Presently my soul grew stronger : hesitating then no

longer,
"Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I

implore :
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you

came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my

chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you." Here I opened

wide the door.

Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there,

wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to

dream before.
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave

no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered

word, "Lenore!"

THE RAVEN. 69

This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the
word, " Lenore !"

Merely this, and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within

me burning,
Soon again 1 heard a tapping, something louder than

before.
"Surely,11 said I, "surely that is something at my

window-lattice :
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery

explore, —
Let my heart be still a moment, and this mystery

explore :

'Tis the wind, and nothing more."

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a

flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days

of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he, — not a minute

stopped or stayed he,
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my

chamber door, —
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber

door, —

Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebon bird beguiling my sad fancy into

smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance

it wore,

70 THE RAVEN.

" Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said,

" art sure no craven,
Ghastly, grim, and ancient Raven, wandering from

the Nightly shore.
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's

Plutonian shore ! "

Quoth the Raven, " Nevermore."

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse

so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning — little relevancy

bore;
For we can not help agreeing that no living human

being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his

chamber door, —
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his

chamber door,

With such name as " Nevermore."

But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust,

spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did

outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered ; not a feather then

he fluttered, —
Till I scarcely more than muttered, " Other friends

have flown before !
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have

flown before ! "

Then the bird said " Nevermore.1'

THE RAVEN. 71

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly

spoken,
" Doubtless," said I, " what it utters is its only stock

and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful

Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one

burden bore, —
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden

bore

Of * Never, — nevermore ! ' "

But the Raven still beguiling all my sad soul into
smiling,

Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird
and bust and door;

Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to
linking

Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird
of yore —

What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and omin
ous bird of yore

Meant in croaking " Nevermore."

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable

expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my

bosom's core :
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease

reclining
On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamplight

gloated o'er,

72 THE RAVEN.

But whose velvet violet lining, with the lamplight
gloating o'er,

She shall press, ah, nevermore !

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed

from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the

tufted floor.
"Wretch!" I cried, "thy God hath lent thee — by

these angels he hath sent thee
Respite — respite and nepenthe from thy memories

of Lenore !
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget the

lost Lenore ! "

Quoth the Raven, " Nevermore.1'

" Prophet ! " cried I, " thing of evil ! — prophet still,

if bird or devil ! —
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed

thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land

enchanted —
On this Home by horror haunted — tell me truly, I

implore —
Is there — is there balm in Gilead ? Tell me ! — tell

me, I implore ! "

Quoth the Raven, " Nevermore."

" Prophet ! " cried I, " thing of evil !— prophet still,

if bird or devil ! —
By that Heaven that bends above us — by that God

we both adore! —

THE RAVEN. 73

Tell this soul with sorrow laden, if, within the dis
tant Aidenn,

It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels
name Lenore, —

Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels
name Lenore."

Quoth the Raven, " Nevermore."

" Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!"

I shrieked, upstarting.
" Get thee back into the tempest and the NightV

Plutonian shore !
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul

hath spoken !
Leave my loneliness unbroken ! — quit the bust above

my door !
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form

from off my door ! "

Quoth the Raven, " Nevermore.11

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is

sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas, just above my chamber

do->r ;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that

is dreaming,
And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his

shadow on the floor ;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating

on the floor

Shall be lifted — nevermore!

74 LENORE.

LENORE.

AH, broken is the golden bowl ! — the spirit flown

forever ! —
Let the bell toll ! — a saintly soul floats on the

Stygian river ;
And, Guy De Vere, hast thou no tear ? — weep now,

or never more !

See, on yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy love,

Lenore !
Come, let the burial rite be read, — the funeral song

be sung ! —
An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so

young, —
A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so

young.

"Wretches! ye loved her for her wealth and hated

her for her pride !
And when she fell in feeble health, ye blessed her —

that she died !
How shall the ritual, then, be read ? — (he requiem

how be sung
By you — by yours, the evil eye, — by yours, the

slanderous tongue
That did to death the innocence that died, and died

so young ? "

LENORE. 75

Peccavimusl But rave* not thus, and let a Sabbath

song
Go up to God so solemnly the dead may feel no

wrong !
The sweet Lenore hath "gone before," with Hope,

that flew beside,
Leaving thee wild for the dear child that should have

been thy bride ! —
For her, the fair and debonair, that now so lowly

lies,
The life upon her yellow hair, but not within her

eyes, —
The life still there, upon her hair, — the death upon

her eyes.

" Avaunt ! To-night my heart is light ! No dirge

will I upraise,
But waft the angel on her flight with a paean of old

days !

Let no bell toll! — lest her sweet soul, amid its hal
lowed mirth,
Should catch the note, as it doth float up from the

damned Earth !
To friends above, from fiends below, the indignant

ghost is riven, —
From Hell unto a high estate far up within the

Heaven, —
From grief and groan to a golden throne, beside the

King of Heaven."

7 6 THE BELLS.

THE BELLS.

I.

HEAR the sledges with the bells,—

Silver bellsX

What a world of merriment their melody foretells :
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,

In the icy air of night ! -
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle

With a crystalline delight ;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells, -
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells

II.
Hear the mellow wedding bells, —

Golden bells !

What a world of happiness their harmony foretells !
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight !
From the molten golden notes,

And all in tune,
What a liquid ditty floats

To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloais
On the moon !

THE BELLS. 77

Oh, from out the sounding cells,
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells !
How it swells !
How it dwells

On the Future ! How it tells
Of the rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells, —
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells !

III.

Hear the loud alarum bells, —

Brazen bells !

What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!
In the startled ear of night
How they scream out their affright !
Too much horrified to speak,
They can only shriek, shriek, shriek,

Out of tune,

In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic
fire,

Leaping higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire,
And a resolute endeavor
"Now — now to sit, or never,
By the side of the pale-faced moon.
Oh, the bells, bells, bells!
What a tale their terror tells
Of Despair!

78 THE BELLS.

How they clang, and clash, and roar!
What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating air !
Yet the ear it fully knows,
By the twanging,
And the clanging,
How the danger ebbs and flows ;
Yet the ear distinctly tells,
In the jangling,
And the wrangling,
How the danger sinks and swells,
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the
bells,

Of the bells,—
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells, -
In the clamor and the clangor of the bells !

IV.

Hear the tolling of the bells, —

Iron bells !
What a world of solemn thought their monody com

pels!

In the silence of the night,
How we shiver with affright
At the melancholy menace of their tone !
For every sound that floats
From the rust within their throats

Is a groan.

And the people — ah, the people —
They that dwell up in the steeple,
All alone,

THE BELLS. 79

And who tolling, tolling, tolling,

In that muffled monotone,
Feel a glory in so rolling

On the human heart a stone :
They are neither man nor woman, —
They are neither brute nor human, —

They are Ghouls ;
And their king it is who tolls, —
And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
Rolls a pa?an from the bells !
And his merry bosom swells
With the paean of the bells,
And he dances, and he yells ;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the paean of the bells, —

Of the bells :
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the throbbing of the bells, —
Of the bells, bells, bells,—

To the sobbing of the bells ;
Keeping time, time, time,

As he knells, knells, knells,
In a happy Runic rhyme,

To the rolling of the bells, —
Of the bells, bells, bells, —
To the tolling of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, —

Bells, bells, bells, —
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.

8o ANNABEL LEE.

ANNABEL LEE.
^ vx / «__ l ^ i ^ 1
IT was manvTand many a year ago,

In a kingdom by *he sea, ^ *

atadaide^i there liv.ecl w$6m you may know,

** *t / «*„/*/ T«r
Bjf the naYne of ANNABEL LEE ; /

And this madden sTTe lived wfth r^o other thought
Th^n to love a*nd be love^ by me.

by
^ ^ J

' t, w / - / - ^ /
/was a child and ^ was a child,

In this kingdom 6y tKe sea : ^ f

But ye lovejd with a lovg tHat was jp ore {Kan love,

I and my ANNABEL J.EE ; ^

With "a love tliat t'Ke winged seraphs of heaven

dovetecl her and nie.

*— * . v^ «** / „ / / / v_

And this was the reason that, long ago,

In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

My beautiful ANNABEL LEE ;
So that her highborn kinsman came

And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre

In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy m heaven,
Went envying her and me, —

ULALUME. 8 1

Yes ! — that was tne reason (as all men know,

In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

Chilling and killing my ANNABEL LEE.

Bat our love it was stronger by far than the love

Of those who were olcter than we, —

Of many far wisej^iban we ;
And neither the angels in heaven above,

Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can .ever dUseverrny soul from the soul

Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE :
For the moon never beams, without bringing me
dreams

Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE ;
And the stars never rise, but'I feel the bright eyes

Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE ;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling — my darling — my life and my
bride,

In the sepulchre there by the sea,

In her tomb by the sounding sea.

ULALUME.

THE skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crisped and
The leaves they were withering and sere, —

It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year ;

82 ULALUME.

It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
In the misty mid-region of Weir, —

It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

Here once, through an alley Titanic,
Of cypress, I roamed with my soul, —
Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.

These were days when my heart was volcanic
As the scoriae rivers that roll —
As the lavas that restlessly roll —

Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek
In the ultimate climes of the pole —

That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek,
In the realms of the boreal pole.

Our talk had been serious and sober,
But our thoughts they were palsied and sere,
Our memories were treacherous and sere, —

For we knew not the month was October,
And we marked not the night of the year, —
(Ah, night of all nights in the year!)

We noted not the dim lake of Auber —

(Though once we had journeyed down here)—

Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber,
Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

And now, as the night was senescent,
And the star-dials pointed to morn, —
As the star-dials hinted of morn, —

At the end of our path a liquescent
And nebulous lustre was born,

ULALUME. 83

Out of which a miraculous crescent

Arose with a duplicate horn, —
Astarte's bediamonded crescent,

Distinct with its duplicate horn.

And I said, " She is warmer than Dian :

She rolls through an ether of sighs, —

She revels in a region of sighs :
She has seen that the tears are not dry on

These cheeks, where the worm never dies,
And has come past the stars of the Lion

To point us the path to the skies, —

To the Lethean peace of the skies, —
Come up, in despite of the Lion,

To shine on us with her bright eyes,
Come up through the lair of the Lion,

With love in her luminous eyes."

But Psyche, uplifting her finger,

Said, " Sadly this star I mistrust, —
Her pallor I strangely mistrust :

Oh, hasten ! oh, let us not linger!
Oh, fly ! — let us fly ! — for we must."

In terror she spoke, letting sink her
Wings until they trailed in the dust, —

In agony sobbed, letting sink her

Plumes till they trailed in the dust, —
Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust.

I replied, " This is nothing but dreaming:

Let us on by this tremulous light !

Let us bathe in this crystalline light !
Its Sybilic splendor is beaming

With Hope and in Beauty to-night :

84 ULALUME.

See ! it flickers up the sky through the night !
Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming,

And be sure it will lead us aright.
We safely may trust to a gleaming

That cannot but guide us aright,

Since it flickers up to Heaven through the night.1'

Thus I pacified Psyche, and kissed her,
And tempted her out of her gloom, —
And conquered her scruples and gloom ;

And we passed to the end of the vista,

But were stopped by the door of a tomb, —
By the door of a legended tomb :

And I said, " What is written, sweet sister,
On the door of this legended tomb?"

She replied, " Ulalume ! — Ulalume ! —

Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume ! "

Then my heart it grew ashen and sober
As the leaves that were crisped and sere, —
As the leaves that were withering and sere :

And I cried, " It was surely October, —
On this very night of last year,
That I journeyed — I journeyed down here, —
That I brought a dread burden down here :
On this night, of all nights in the year,
Ah, what demon has tempted me here?

Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber, —
This misty mid-region of Weir, —

Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber, — •
This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir."

THE COLISEUM. 85

THE COLISEUM.

TYPE of the antique Rome ! Rich reliquary
Of lofty contemplation left to Time
By buried centuries of pomp and power !
At length — at length — after so many days
Of weary pilgrimage and burning thirst,
(Thirst for the springs of lore that in thee lie,)
I kneel, an altered and an humble man,
Amid thy shadows, and so drink within
My very soul thy grandeur, gloom, and glory!

Vastness ! and Age ! and Memories of Eld !
Silence! and Desolation! and dim Night!
I feel ye now — I feel ye in your strength —
Oh, spells more sure than e'er Judean king
Taught in the gardens of Gethsemane !
Oh, charms more potent than the rapt Chaldee
Ever drew down from out the quiet stars !

Here, where a hero fell, a column falls !

Here, where a mimic eagle glared in gold,

A midnight vigil holds the swarthy bat !

Here, where the dames of Rome their gilded hair

Waved to the wind, now wave the reed and thistle !

Here, where on golden throne the monarch lolled,

Glides, spectre-like, unto his marble home,

Lit by the wan light of the horned moon,

86 TO HELEN.

The swift and silent lizard of the stones '.

But stay ! These walls — these ivy-clad arcades —

These mouldering plinths — these sad and blackened

shafts —

These vague entablatures — this crumbling frieze —
These shattered cornices — this wreck — this ruin —
These stones — alas! these gray stones — are

all —

All of the famed and the colossal left
By the corrosive Hours to Fate and me ?

" Not all ! " the echoes answered me. " Not all i

Prophetic sounds and loud, arise forever

From us, and from all Ruin, unto the wise,

As melody from Memnon to the Sun.

vVe rule the hearts of mightiest men! — we rule

With a despotic sway all giant minds !

We are not impotent — we pallid stones.

Not all our power is gone ! — not all our fame ! —

Not all the magic of our high renown ! —

Not all the wonder that encircles us ! —

Not all the mysteries that in us lie ! —

Not all the memories that hang upon

And cling around about us as a garment,

Clothing us in a robe of more than glory."

TO HELEN.

\ SAW thee once — once only — years ago :

I must not say how many — but not many.

It was a July midnight : and from out

A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring,

TO HELEN. 87

Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven,
There fell a silvery silken veil of light,
With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber,
Upon the upturned faces of a thousand
Roses that grew in an enchanted garden,
Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe, —
Fell on the upturned faces of these roses
That gave out, in return for the love-light,
Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death, —
Fell on the upturned faces of these roses
That smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted
By thee, and by the poetry of thy presence.

Clad all in white, upon a violet bank

I saw thee half reclining ; while the moon

Fell on the upturned faces of the roses,

And on thine own, upturned, — alas, in sorrow!

Was it not Fate, that, on this July midnight —

Was it not Fate (whose name is also Sorrow)

That bade me pause before that garden-gate

To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses?

No footstep stirred : the hated world all slept,

Save only thee and me. (Oh, Heaven! — oh, God/

How my heart beats in coupling those two words !)

Save only thee and me ! I paused — I looked —

And in an instant all things disappeared.

(Ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted !)

The pearly lustre of the moon went out :
The mossy banks and the meandering paths -—
The happy flowers and the repining trees —
Were seen no more : the very roses' odors
Died in the arms of the adoring air.

88 TO HELEN.

All — all expired save thee — save Jess than thou%

Save only the divine light in thine eyes —

Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes.

I saw but them — they were the world to me :

I saw but them — saw only them for hours —

Saw only them until the moon went down.

What wild heart-histories seemed to lie enwritten

Upon those crystalline, celestial spheres !

How dark a woe ! yet how sublime a hope !

How silently serene a sea of pride !

How daring an ambition ! yet how deep —

How fathomless a capacity for love !

But now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight,

into a western couch of thunder-cloud ;

And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees

Didst glide away. Only thine eyes remained.

They would not go, — they never yet have gone.

Lighting my lonely pathway home that night,

They have not left me (as my hopes have) since.

They follow me — they lead me through the years

They are my ministers — yet I their slave.

Their office is to illumine and enkindle,

My duty to be saved by their bright light,

And purified in their electric fire,

And sanctified in their elysian fire.

They fill my soul with beauty (which is Hope),

And are far up in Heaven — the stars I kneel to

In the sad, silent watches of my night ;

While even in the meridian glare of day

I see them still — two sweetly scintillant

Venuses, unextinguished by the sun !

TO . 89

TO

NOT long ago, the writer of these lines,

In the mad pride of intellectuality,

Maintained "the power of words," — denied that

ever

A thought arose within the human brain
Beyond the utterance of the human tongue :
And now, as if in mockery of that boast,
Two words — two foreign soft dissyllables —
Italian tones, made only to be murmured
By angels dreaming in the moonlit " dew
That hangs like chains of pearl on Hermon hill," —
Have stirred from out the abysses of his heart,
Unthought-like thoughts that are the souls of thought,
Richer, far wider, far diviner visions
Than even the seraph harper, Israfel
(Who has " the sweetest voice of all God's creatures")
Could hope to utter. And I ! my spells are broken.
The pen falls powerless from my shivering hand.
With thy dear name as text, though bidden by thee,
I cannot write — I cannot speak or think —
Alas, I cannot feel ; for 'tis not feeling,
This standing motionless upon the golden
Threshold of the wide open gate of dreams,
Gazing, entranced, adown the gorgeous vista,
And thrilling as I see, upon the right,
Upon the left, and all the way along,
Amid unpurpled vapors, far away,
To where the prospect terminates — thee only.

90 A VALENTINE.

A VALENTINE.

FOR her this rhyme is penned, whose luminous eyes.

Brightly expressive of the twins of Loeda,
Shall find her own sweet name, that, nestling lies

Upon the page, enwrapped from every reader.
Search narrowly the lines ! — they hold a treasure

Divine, — a talisman — an amulet
That must be worn at heart. Search well the meas
ure —

The words — the syllables ! Do not forget
The trivialest point, or you may lose your labor \

And yet there is in this no Gordian knot
Which one might not undo without a sabre,

If one could merely comprehend the plot.
Enwritten upon the leaf where now are peering

Eyes scintillating soul, there lies perdus
Three eloquent words oft uttered in the hearing

Of poets, by poets, — as the name is a poet's, too.
Its letters, although naturally lying

Like the knight Pinto — Mendez Ferdinando —
Still form a synonym for Truth. — Cease trying !

You will not read the riddle, though you do the
best you can do.

[To translate the address, rend the first letter of the first line in
connection -with the second letter of the second line, the third letter of
the third line, the fourth of the fourth, and so on to the end. The
name will thus appear.]

HYMN.

TO MY MOTHER.

BECAUSE I feel that, in the Heavens above,

The angels, whispering to one another,
Can find, among their burning terms of love,

None so devotional as that of " Mother,"
Therefore by that dear name I long have called you, — .

You who are more than mother unto me^-
And fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed
you,

In setting my Virginia's spirit free.
My mother — my own mother, who died early,

Was but the mother of myself; but you
Are mother to ihe one I loved so dearly,

And thus are dearer than the mother I knew
By that infinity with which my wife
Was dearer to my soul than its own soul-life.

HYMN.

AT morn — at noon — at twilight dim —
Maria, thou hast heard my hymn !
In joy and woe — in good and ill —
Mother of God, be with me still !
When the Hours flew brightly by,
And not a cloud obscured the sky,

92 THE HAUNTED PALACE.

My soul, lest it should truant be,
Thy grace did guide to thine and thee:
Now, when storms of Fate o'ercast
Darkly my Present and my Past,
Let my Future radiant shine
With sweet hopes of thee and thine !

AN ENIGMA.

" SELDOM we find," says Solomon Don Dunce,

" Half an idea in the profoundest sonnet,
Through all the flimsy things we see at once,

As easily as through a Naples bonnet —

Trash of all trash ! — how can a lady don it !
Yet heavier far than your Petrarchan stuff, —
Owl-downy nonsense that the faintest puff

Twirls into trunk-paper the while you con it."
And, veritably, Sol is right enough.
The general tuckermanities are arrant
Bubbles, — ephemeral and so transparent!

But this is, now, — you may depend upon it, —
Stable, opaque, immortal, — all by dint
Of the dear names that lie concealed within't.

THE HAUNTED PALACE.

IN the greenest of our valleys

By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace —

Radiant palace — reared its head.

THE HAUNTED PALACE. 93

In the monarch Thought's dominion —

It stood there !
Never seraph spread a pinion

Over fabric half so fair !

Banners yellow, glorious, golden,

On its roof did float and flow,
(This — all this — was in the olden

Time long ago,)
And every gentle air that dallied,

In that sweet day,
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,

A winged odor went away.

Wanderers in that happy valley,

Through two luminous windows, saw
Spirits moving musically,

To a lute's well-tuned law,
Round about a throne where, sitting

(Porphyrogene !)
In state his glory well befitting,

The ruler of the realm was seen.

And all with pearl and ruby glowing

Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,

And sparkling ever more,
A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty

Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,

The wit and wisdom of their king.

94 THE CONQUEROR WORM.

But evil things, in robes of sorrow,

Assailed the monarch's high estate.
(Ah, let us mourn ! — for never morrow

Shall dawn upon him desolate !)
And round about his home the glory

That blushed and bloomed,
IF but a dim-remembered story

Of the old time entombed.

And travellers, now, within that valley,

Through the red-litten windows see
Vast forms, that move fantastically

To a discordant melody,
While, like a ghastly rapid river,

Through the pale door
A hideous throng rush out forever

And laugh, — but smile no more.

THE CONQUEROR WORM.

Lo ! 'tis a gala night

Within the lonesome latter years.
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight

In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see

A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully

The music of the spheres.

Mimes, in the form of God on high,

Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly, —

Mere puppets they, who come and go

THE CONQUEROR WORM. 95

At bidding of vast formless things

That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings

Invisible Woe !

That motley drama — oh, be sure

It shall not be forgot !
With its Phantom chased for evermore,

By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in

To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,

And Horror the soul of the plot.

.Jut see, amid the mimic rout

A crawling shape intrude !
A blood-red thing that writhes from out

The scenic solitude !
It writhes ! — it writhes ! — with mortal pangs

The mimes become its food,
And the angels sob at vermin fangs

In human gore imbrued.

Out — out are the lights — out all !

And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,

Comes down with the rush of a storm,
And the angels, all pallid and wan,

Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, " Man,"

And its hero the Conqueror Worm.

96 TO ONE IN PARADISE.

TO ONE IN PARADISE.

THOU wast that all to me, love,
For which my soul did pine, —

A green isle in the sea, love,
A fountain and a shrine,

All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers.
And all the flowers were mine.

Ah, dream too bright to last !

Ah, starry Hope ! that didst arise
But to be overcast !

A voice from out the future cries,
" On ! on ! " But o'er the Past

(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
Mute, motionless, aghast !

For, alas ! alas ! with me

The light of Life is o'er !
" No more — no more — no more — "

(Such language holds the solemn sea
To the sands upon the shore)

Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,
Or the stricken eagle soar !

And all my days are trances,

And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy dark eye glances,

And where thy footstep gleams, —•
In what ethereal dances,

By what eternal streams.

THE CITY IN THE SEA. 97

TO F S S. O D.

THOU wouldst be loved ? Then let thy heart

From its present pathway part not !
Being everything which now thou art,

Be nothing which thou art not.
So with the world thy gentle ways,

Thy grace, thy more than beauty,
Shall be an endless theme of praise,

And love — a simple duty.

THE CITY IN THE SEA.

Lo ! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst

and the best

Have gone to their eterna/ rest.
There shrines and palaces and towers
(Time-eaten towers that tremble not !)
Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.

No rays from the holy heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town;

THE CITY IN THE SEA.

But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silently —
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free —
Up domes — up spires — up kingly halls — .
Up fanes — up Babylon-like walls —
Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers —
Up many and many a marvellous shrine
Whose wreathed friezes intertwine
The viol, the violet, and the vine.

Resignedly, beneath the sky

The melancholy waters lie.

So blend the turrets and shadows there

That all seem pendulous in air ;

While, from a proud tower in the town

Death looks gigantically down.

There open fanes and gaping graves

Yawn level with the luminous waves,

But not the riches there that lie

In each idol's diamond eye, —

Not the gayly-jewelled dead

Tempt the waters from their bed ;

For no ripples curl, alas !

Along that wilderness of glass ;

No swellings tell that winds may be

Upon some far-off happier sea ;

No heavings hint that winds have been

On scenes less hideously serene.

SILENCE. 99

But lo ! a stir is in the air !
The wave — there is a movement there!
As if the towers had thrust aside,
In slightly sinking, the dull tide, —
As if their tops had feebly given
A void within the filmy Heaven.
The waves have now a redder glow,
The hours are breathing faint and low ;
And when, amid no earthly moans,
Down, down that town shall settle hence,
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
Shall do it reverence.

SILENCE.

THERE are some qualities — some incorporate things —

That have a double life, which thus is made
A type of that twin entity which springs

From matter and light, evinced in solid and shade.
There is a twofold Silence — sea and shore —
Body and soul. One dwells in lonely places,
Newly with grass o'ergrown ; some solemn graces,
Some human memories, and tearful lore,
Render him terrorless : his name's " No More."
He is the corporate Silence : dread him not !

No power hath he of evil in himself;
But should some urgent fate (untimely lot ! )

Bring thee to meet his shadow (nameless elf,
That haunteth the lone regions where hath trod
No foot of man), commend thyself to God !

100 THE SLEEPER.

THE SLEEPER.

AT midnight, in the month of June,
I stand beneath the mystic moon.
An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,
Exhales from out her golden rim,
And, softly dripping, drop by drop,
Upon the quiet mountain-top,
Steals drowsily and musically
Into the universal valley.
The rosemary nods upon the grave ;
The lily lolls upon the wave ;
Wrapping the fog about its breast,
The ruin moulders into rest ;
Looking like Lethe, see ! the lake
A conscious slumber seems to take,
And would not, for the world, awake.
All Beauty sleeps ! And lo ! where lies
(Her casement open to the skies)
Irene, with her Destinies !
Oh, lady bright ! can it be right —
This window open to the night? —
The wanton airs, from the tree-top,
Laughingly through the lattice drop, —
The bodiless airs, a wizard rout,
Flit through thy chamber in and out,
And wave the curtain canopy
So fitfully — so fearfully —

THE SLEE&Efc '*!*> '>/•',

Above the closed and fringed lid
'Neath which thy slumb'ring soul lies hid,
That, o'er the floor and down the wall,
Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall !
Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear?
Why and what art thou dreaming here?
Sure thou art come o'er far-off seas,
A wonder to these garden-trees !
Strange is thy pallor ! strange thy dress !
Strange, above all, thy length of tress,
And this all solemn silentness !

The lady sleeps ! Oh, may her sleep,
Which is enduring, so be deep !
Heaven have her in its sacred keep !
This chamber changed for one more holy,
This bed for one more melancholy,
I pray to God that she may lie
Forever with unopened eye,
While the dim sheeted ghosts go by !

My love, she sleeps ! Oh, may her sleep,

As it is lasting, so be deep !

Soft may the worms about her creep !

Far in the forest, dim and old,

For her may some tall vault unfold, —

Some vault that oft hath flung its black

And winged panels fluttering back,

Triumphant, o'er the crested palls

Of her grand family funerals, —

Some sepulchre, remote, alone,

Against whose portal she hath thrown,

PAL&EY OF UNREST.

In childhood many an idle stone, —
Some tomb from out whose sounding door
She ne'er shall force an echo more,
Thrilling to think, poor child of sin !
It was the dead who groaned within.

THE VALLEY OF UNREST.

ONCE it smiled a silent dell

Where the people did not dwell ;

They had gone unto the wars,

Trusting to the mild-eyed stars,

Nightly, from their azure towers,

To keep watch above the flowers,

In the midst of which all day

The red sunlight lazily lay.

Now each visitor shall confess

The sad valley's restlessness.

Nothing there is motionless, —

Nothing save the airs that brood

Over the magic solitude.

Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees

That palpitate like the chill seas

Around the misty Hebrides !

Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven

That rustle through the unquiet Heaven

Uneasily, from morn till even,

Over the violets there that lie

In myriad types of the human eye, —

Over the lilies there that wave

And weep above a nameless grave !

A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM. 103

They wave : — from out their fragrant tops
Eternal dews come down in drops.
They weep : — from off their delicate stems
Perennial tears descend in gems.

A DREAM WITHIN- A DREAM.

TAKE this kiss upon the brow !

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow :

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream ;

Yet if Hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone ?

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand :
How few ! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep, — while I weep !
Oh, God ! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
Oh, God ! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave ?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

104 DREAM-LAND.

DREAM-LAND.

BY a route obscure and lonely,

Haunted by ill angels only,

Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,

On a black throne reigns upright,

I have reached these lands but newly,

From an ultimate dim Thule, —

From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,

Out of SPACE — out of TIME.

Bottomless vales and boundless floods,
And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods,
With forms that no man can discover
For the dews that drip all over ;
Mountains toppling evermore
Into seas without a shore ;
Seas that restlessly aspire,
Surging, into skies of fire ;
Lakes that endlessly outspread
Their lone waters — lone and dead, —
Their still waters — still and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily.

By the lakes that thus outspread
Their lone waters, lone and dread, —
Their sad waters, sad and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily, —

DREAM-LAND. 105

By the mountains — near the river
Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever, —
By the gray woods, — by the swamp
Where the toad and the newt encamp, —
By the dismal tarns and pools
Where dwell the Ghouls, —
By each spot the most unholy, —
In each nook most melancholy, —
There the traveller meets aghast
Sheeted Memories of the Past, —
Shrouded forms that start and sigh
As they pass the wanderer by, —
White-robed forms of friends long given
In agony, to the Earth, — and Heaven.

For the heart whose woes are legion

Tis a peaceful, soothing region, —

For the spirit that walks in shadow

Tis — oh, 'tis an Eldorado !

But the traveller, travelling through it,

May not — dare not — openly view it ;

Never its mysteries are exposed

To the weak human eye unclosed ;

So wills its King, who hath forbid

The uplifting of the fringed lid ;

And thus the sad Soul that here passes

Beholds it but through darkened glasses.

By a route obscure and lonely,

Haunted by ill angels only,

Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,

On a black throne reigns upright,

I have wandered home but newly

From this ultimate dim Thule.

106 EULALIE.

TO ZANTE.

FAIR isle, that from the fairest of all flowers,

Thy gentlest of all gentle names dost take !
How many memories of what radiant hours

At sight of thee and thine at once awake !
How many scenes of what departed bliss !

How many thoughts of what entombed hopes !
How many visions of a maiden that is

No more — no more upon thy verdant slopes !
No morel Alas, that magical sad sound

Transforming all! Thy charms shall please no

more, —
Thy memory no more ! Accursed ground

Henceforth I hold thy flower-enamelled shore,
Oh, hyacinthine isle ! Oh, purple Zante !
" Isola d'oro ! Fior di Levante ! "

EULALIE.

I DWELT alone
In a world of moan,
And my soul was a stagnant tide,
Till the fair and gentle Eulalie became my blushing

bride, —

Till the yellow-haired young Eulalie became my
smiling bride.

ELDORADO. 107

Ah, less — less bright
The stars of the night
Than the eyes of the radiant girl ;
And never a flake
That the vapor can make
With the moon-tints of purple and pearl,
Can vie with the modest Eulalie^ most unregarded

curl, —

Can compare with the bright-eyed Eulalie's most
humble and careless curl.

Now Doubt — now Pain
Come never again,
For her soul gives me sigh for sigh,
And all day long
Shines bright and strong,
Astarte within the sky,
While ever to her dear Eulalie upturns her matron

eye, —

While ever to her young Eulalie upturns her violet
eye.

ELDORADO.

GAYLY bedight,

A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,

Had journeyed long,

Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.

ISKAFEL.

But he grew old, —
This knight so bold, —

And o?er his heart a shadow
Fell as he found
No spot of ground

That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim Shadow.
" Shadow," said he,
" Where can it be —
This land of Eldorado?"

" Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,

Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,"
The Shade replied, —

" If you seek for Eldorado !"

ISRAFEL*

IN Heaven a spirit doth dwell,
"Whose heartstrings are a lute."
None sing so wildly well
As the angel, Israfel,
And the giddy stars (so legends tell)
Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell
Of his voice, all mute.

1 And the angel Israfel, whose heartstrings are a lute, and who has
the sweetest voice of all God's creatures. — KOKAN.

ISRA PEL. 109

Tottering above,

In her highest noon,

The enamoured moon
Blushes with love, —

While, to listen, the red leven

(With the rapid Pleiades, even,

Which were seven,)

Pauses in Heaven.

And they say (the starry choir
And the other listening things)

That Israfeli's fire

Is owing to that lyre

By which he sits and sings, —

The trembling living wire

Of those unusual strings.

But the skies that angel trod,
Where deep thoughts are a duty

Where Love's a grown-up God, —
Where the Houri glances are

Imbued with all the beauty
Which we worship in a star.

Therefore, thou art not wrong,

Israfeli, who despisest
An unimpassioned song :
To thee the laurels belong,

Best bard, because the wisest !
Merrily live, and long !

The ecstasies above

With thy burning measures suit

HO FOR ANNIE,

Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love,
With the fervor of thy lute :
Well may the stars be mute !

Yes, Heaven is thine ; but this
Is a world of sweets and sours :
Our flowers are merely — flowers,

And the shadow of thy perfect biiss
Is the sunshine of ours.

If I could dwell
Where Israfel

Hath dwelt, and he where I,
He might not sing so wildly well

A mortal melody, —
While a bolder note than this might swell

From my lyre within the sky.

FOR ANNIE.

THANK Heaven! the crisis —
The danger — is past,

And the lingering illness
Is over at last, —

And the fever called " Living"
Is conquered at last.

Sadly, I know,

I am shorn of my strength,
And no muscle I move

As I lie at full length ;
But no matter ! — I feel

I am better at length.

FOR ANNIE.

And I rest so composed

Now, in my bed,
That any beholder

Might fancy me dead, —
Might start at beholding me,

Thinking me dead.

The moaning and groaning —
The sighing and sobbing —

Are quieted now,

With that horrible throbbing

At heart : — ah, that horrible,
Horrible throbbing !

The sickness — the nausea —

The pitiless pain —
Have ceased, with the fever

That maddened my brain, —
With the fever called " Living"

That burned in my brain.

And oh ! of all tortures,

That torture the worst
Has abated — the terrible

Torture of thirst
For the napthaline river

Of Passion accurst : —
I have drank of a water

That quenches all thirst : —

Of a water that flows,

With a lullaby sound,
From a spring but a very few

112 FOR ANNIE.

Feet under ground, —
From a cavern not very far
Down under ground.

And ah ! let it never

Be foolishly said
That my room it is gloomy,

And narrow my bed ;
For man never slept

In a different bed, —
And, to sleep, you must slumber

In just such a bed.

My tantalized spirit
Here blandly reposes,

Forgetting, or never
Regretting its roses, —

Its old agitations

Of myrtles and roses.

For now, while so quietly

Lying, it fancies
A holier odor

About it, of pansies, —
A rosemary odor

Commingled with pansies, —
With rue and the beautiful

Puritan pansies.

And so it lies happily,

Bathing in many
A dream of the truth

FOR ANNIE.

And the beauty of Annie,—
Drowned in a bath

Of the tresses of Annie.

She tenderly kissed me,

She fondly caressed,
And then 1 fell gently

To sleep on her breast, —
Deeply to sleep

From the heaven of her breast.

When the light was extinguished

She covered me warm,
And she prayed to the angels

To keep me from harm, —
To the queen of the angels

To shield me from harm.

And I lie so composedly,

Now, in my bed,
(Knowing her love)

That you fancy me dead, —
And I rest so contentedly,

Now in my bed,
(With her love at my breast)

That you fancy me dead, —
That you shudder to look at me9

Thinking me dead.

But my heart it is brighter

Than all of the many
Stars in the sky,

For it sparkles with Annie,

114 BRIDAL BALLAD.

It glows with the light

Of the love of my Annie, —

With the thought of the light
Of the eyes of my Annie.

TO F .

BELOVED, amid the earnest woes
That crowd around my earthly path, — *

(Drear path, alas ! where grows

Not even one lonely rose), —
My soul at least a solace hath

In dreams of thee, and therein knows

An Eden of bland repose.

And thus my memory is to me
Like some enchanted far-off isle

In some tumultuous sea, —

Some ocean throbbing far and free
With storms, — but where meanwhile

Serenest skies continually
Just o'er that one bright island smile.

BRIDAL BALLAD.

THE ring/is on my hand,

And the wreatry is on my brow ;

Satins and jewelsf grand

Are all at my command,
And I am happy now.

N

BRIDAL BALLAD.

And my lord he loves me well ;

But, when first he breathed his vow,
I felt my bosom swell, —
For the words j;ang as a knell,
And the voice seemed his who fell
In the battle down the dell,

And who is happy now.

But he spoke to reassure me,

And he kissed my pallid brow,
While a reverie came o'er me,
And to the churchyard bore me,
And I sighed to him before me,
Thinking him dead D'Elormie,
" Oh, I am jiappy now ! "

And thus the words were spoken,
And this the plighted vow,

And, though my faith be broken,

And, though my heart he broken,

Behold the golden token
That p roues me happy now!

Would to God I could awaken !

For I dream I know not how;
And my soul is sorely shaken
Lest an evil step be taken, —
Lest the dead who is forsaken

May not Jbe happy now.

Il6 SCENES FROM " POLITIAN?

TO .

I HEED not that my earthly lot

Hath — little of Earth in it, —
That years of love have been forgot

In the hatred of a minute :
I mourn not that the desolate

Are happier, sweet, than I ;
But that you sorrow for my fate

Who am but a passer-by.

SCENES FROM " POLITIAN?

AN UNPUBLISHED DRAMA.

I.

ROME. — A Hall in a Palace. Alessandra and Castiglione

Alessandra. Thou art sad, Castiglione.

Castiglione. Sad ! — not I.
Oh, Pm the happiest, happiest man in Rome!
A few days more, thou knowest, my Alessandra,
Will make thee mine. Oh, I am very happy!

Aless. Methinks thou hast a singular way of

showing

Thy happiness ! What ails thee, cousin of mine?
Why didst thou sigh so deeply?

Cas. Did I sigh?

SCENES FROM " POLITIAN? 117

I was not conscious of it. It is a fashion,

A silly — a most silly fashion I have

When I am very happy. Did I sigh? (Sighing.')

Aless. Thou didst. Thou art not well. Thou

hast indulged

Too much of late, and I am vexed to see it.
Late hours and wine, Castiglione, — these
Will ruin thee ! Thou art already altered, —
Thy looks are haggard : nothing so wears away
The constitution as late hours and wine.

Cas. (musing). Nothing, fair cousin, nothing, —

even deep sorrow, —
Wears it away like evil hours and wine.
I will amend.

Aless. Do it ! I would have thee drop
Thy riotous company, too. Fellows low born
111 suit the like with old Di Broglio's heir
And Alessandra's husband.

Cas. I will drop them.

Aless. Thou wilt, — thou must. Attend thou also

more

To thy dress and equipage. They are over plain
For thy lofty rank and fashion : much depends
Upon appearances.

Cas. I'll see to it.

Aless. Then see to it ! Pay more attention, sir,
To a becoming carriage. Much thou wantest
In dignity.

Cas. Much, much : oh, much I want
In proper dignity.

Aless. (haughtily}. Thou mockest me, sir!

Cas. (abstractedly). Sweet, gentle Lalage !

Ii8 SCENES FROM " POLITIAN."

Aless. Heard I aright?
I speak to him, — he speaks of Lalage !
Sir Count ! {places her hand on his shoulder) what

art thou dreaming?
He's not well ! What ails thee, sir?

Cas. (starting) . Cousin ! fair cousin ! — madam !
I crave thy pardon. Indeed, I am not well !
Your hand from off my shoulder, if you please.
This air is most oppressive ! Madam, the Duke !
(Enter Di Broglio.)

Di Broglio. My son, I've news for thee !
Hey! what's the matter? (observing Alessandra.)
P the pouts? Kiss her, Castiglione ! Kiss her,
You dog ! and make it up, I say, this minute !
I've news for you both. Politian is expected
Hourly in Rome, — Politian, Earl of Leicester !
We'll have him at the wedding. 'Tis his first visit
To the imperial city.

Aless. What ! Politian
Of Britain, Earl of Leicester?

Di Brog. The same, my love.

We'll have him at the wedding. A man quite young
In years, but gray in fame. I have not seen him,
But Rumor speaks of him as of a prodigy, —
Pre-eminent in arts and arms, and wealth,
And high descent. We'll have him at the wedding.

Aless. I have heard much of this Politian.
Gay, volatile, and giddy, — is he not?
And little given to thinking.

Di Brog. Far from it, love.
No branch, they say, of all philosophy
So deep — abstruse — he has not mastered it.
Learned as few are learned.

SCENES FROM " POLITIAN." 119

Aless. 'Tis very strange !
I have known men who have seen Politian,
And sought his company. They speak of him
As of one who entered madly into life,
Drinking the cup of pleasure to the dregs.

Cas. Ridiculous ! Now / have seen Politian,
And know him well. Nor learned nor mirthful he :
He is a dreamer, and a man shut out
From common passions.

Di Brog. Children, we disagree.
Let us go forth and taste the fragrant air
Of the garden. Did I dream or did I hear
Politian was a melancholy man?

II.

ROME. — A Lady's apartment, with a window open and look
ing into a garden. Lalage, in deep mourning, reading at a
table on which lie some books and a hand mirror. In the
background Jacinta (a servant-maid) leans carelessly upon a
chair.

Lalage. Jacinta! is it thou?
Jacinta {pertly). Yes, ma'am; I'm here.
Lai. I did not know, Jacinta, you were in waiting.
Sit down, — let not my presence trouble you :
Sit down, — for I am humble, most humble.
Jac. (aside}. Tis time.

(jfacinta seats herself in a sidelong manner upon
the chair, resting her elbows upon the back, and
regarding her mistress with a contemptuous
look. Lalage continues to read.}
Lai. " It in another climate, so he said,
Bore a bright golden flower, but not i' this soil ! "

120 SCENES FROM " POLITIAN."

(Pauses, — turns over some leaves, and resumes.}
" No lingering winters there, nor snow, nor shower;
But Ocean, ever to refresh mankind,
Breathes the shrill spirit of the western wind."
Oh, beautiful ! — most beautiful ! — how like
To what my fevered soul doth dream of Heaven !
Oh, happy land ! (pauses.} She died ! — the maiden

died!

Oh, still more happy maiden, who couldst die
Jacinta !

(Jacinta returns no answer, and Lalage pres
ently resumes.}
Again ! — a similar tale
Told of a beauteous dame beyond the sea !
Thus speaketh one Ferdinand, in the words of the

play:

" She died full young ! " One Bossola answers him :
** I think not so : her infelicity

Seemed to have years too many." Ah, luckless lady !
Jacinta ! (Still no answer.}

Here's a far sterner story :
But like — oh, very like, in its despair —
To that Egyptian queen, winning so easily
A thousand hearts, — losing at length her own.
She died. Thus endeth the history : and her maids
Lean over her and weep. Two gentle maids,
With gentle names — Eiros and Charmion !
Rainbow and dove ! Jacinta !

Jac. (pettishly}. Madam, what is it?

Lai. Wilt thou, my good Jacinta, be so kind
As go down in the library and bring me
The Holy Evangelists?

SCENES FROM " POLITIAN" 12 1

Jac. Pshaw ! (Exit.)

Lai. If there be balm

For the wounded spirit in Gilead, it is there •.
Dew in the night-time of my bitter trouble
Will there be found : " dew sweeter far than that
Which hangs like chains of pearl on Hermon hill."
(Re-enter Jacinta, and throws a -volume on the table.)

Jac. There, ma'am, 's the book! (Aside.) In
deed, she^ very troublesome.

Lai. (astonished). What didst thou say, Jacinta?
Have I done aught

To grieve thee or to vex thee? I am sorry ;
For thou hast served me long, and ever been
Trustworthy and respectful. (Resumes her reading.)

Jac. (aside) . I can't believe

She has any more jewels ! No, no ! She gave me
all!

Lai. What didst thou say, Jacinta? Now I be
think me;

Thou hast not spoken lately of thy wedding.
How fares good Ugo? — and when is it to be?
Can I do aught? Is there no further aid
Thou needest, Jacinta?

Jac. (aside). Is there no further aid !
That's meant for me. — I'm sure, madam, you need

not
Be always throwing those jewels in my teeth.

Lai. Jewels, Jacinta ! Now, indeed, Jacinta,
I thought not of the jewels.

Jac. Oh, perhaps not!
but then I might have sworn it. After all,
There's Ugo says the ring is only paste,

122 SCENES FROM " POLITIAN."

For he's sure the Count Castiglione never
Would have given a real diamond to such as you :
And at the best I'm certain, madam, you cannot
Have use for jewels now. But I might have sworn it.

(Exit.}

(Lalage bursts into tears, and leans her head
upon the table. After a short pause raises it.}
Lai. Poor Lalage ! And is it come to this !
Thy servant-maid ! But courage ! — 'tis but a viper
Whom thou hast cherished to sting thee to the soul !

(Taking up the mirror.}

Ha ! here at least's a friend ! — too much a friend
In earlier days ! — a friend will not deceive me.
Fair mirror and true, now tell me (for thou canst)
A tale — a pretty tale — and heed thou not,
Though it be rife with woe. It answers me :
It speaks of sunken eyes, and wasted cheeks,
And Beauty long deceased ; — remembers me
Of Joy departed ; — Hope, the Seraph Hope,
Inurned and intombed ! Now, in a tone
Low, sad, and solemn, but most audible,
Whispers of early grave untimely yawning
For ruined maid. Fair mirror and true ! thou liest

not!

Thou hast no end to gain, — no heart to break !
Castiglione lied, who said he loved ! —
Thou true, — he false ! — false ! — false !

(While she speaks, a monk enters her apartment,

and approaches unobserved.}
Monk. Refuge thou hast,

Sweet daughter, in Heaven. Think of eternal things!
Give up thy soul to penitence, and pray!

SCENES FROM "POL1TIAN." 123

Lai. (arising hurriedly}. I cannot pray! My

soul is at war with God !
The frightful sounds of merriment below
Disturb my senses ! Go ! — I cannot pray !
The sweet airs from the garden worry me !
Thy presence grieves me ! Go ! Thy priestly raiment
Fills me with dread ! Thy ebony crucifix
With horror and awe !

Monk. Think of thy precious soul !

Lai. Think of my early days ! Think of my father
And mother in Heaven ! Think of our quiet home,
And the rivulet that ran before the door !
Think of my little sisters ! — think of them !
And think of me ! Think of my trusting love
And confidence ! — his vows — my ruin — think —

think

Of my unspeakable misery ! — Begone !
Yet stay ! yet stay ! — what wast thou saidst of prayer
And penitence ? Didst tLou not speak of faith,
And vows before the throne?

Monk. I did.

Lai. Tis well.

There is a vow were fitting should be made, —
A sacred vow, imperative and urgent, —
A solemn vow !

Monk. Daughter, this zeal is well !

Lai. Father, this zeal is anything but well !
Hast thou a crucifix fit for this thing?
A crucifix whereon to register

This sacred vow? (He hands her his own^]

Not that ! Oh, no ! — no ! — no ! (Shuddering.)
Not that ! Not that ! I tell thee, holy man,

124 SCENES FROM "POLITIAN."

Thy raiment and thy ebony cross affright me !
Stand back ! I have a crucifix myself!
/ have a crucifix ! Methinks 'twere fitting
The deed — the vow — the symbol of the deed —
And the deed's register — should tally, father!

{Draws a cross-handled dagger, and raises it

on high.}

Behold the cross wherewith a vow like mine
Is written in Heaven !

Monk. Thy \vords are madness, daughter,
And speak a purpose unholy. Thy lips are livid, —
Thine eyes are wild ! Tempt not the wrath divine !
Pause ere too late ! Oh, be not — be not rash !
Swear not the oath, — oh, swear it not !

Lai. 'Tis sworn !

III.

An apartment in a Palace. Politian and Baldazzar.

Baldazzar. Arouse thee now, Politian !
Thou must not — nay indeed, indeed, thou shalt not
Give way unto these humors. Be thyself!
Shake off the idle fancies that beset thee,
And live, for now thou diest !

Politian. Not so, Baldazzar!
Surely I live.

BaL Politian, it doth grieve me
To see thee thus.

Pol. Baldazzar, it doth grieve me
To give thee cause for grief, my honored friend.
Command me, sir! What wouldst thou have me do?
At thy behest I will shake off that nature
Which from my forefathers I did inherit, —

SCEATES FROM " POLITIAN? 125

Which with my mother's milk I did imbibe, —
And be no more Politian, but some other.
Command me, sir!

Bal. To the field, then ! — to the field !
To the senate or the field.

Pol. Alas ! alas !

There is an imp would follow me even there !
There is an imp hath followed me even there !
There is what voice was that?

Bal. I heard it not.
I heard not any voice except thine own,
And the echo of thine own.

Pol. Then I but dreamed.

Bal. Give not thy soul to dreams: the camp —

the court —

Befit thee. Fame awaits thee ! .Glory calls !
And her the trumpet-tongued thou wilt not hear,
In hearkening to imaginary sounds
And phantom voices.

Pol. It is a phantom voice !
Didst thou not hear it then f

Bal. I heard it not.

Pol. Thoujieardst it not! Baldazzar, speak no

more

To me, Politian, of thy camps and courts.
Oh, I am sick, sick, sick, even unto death,
Of the hollow and high-sounding vanities
Of the populous Earth ! Bear with me yet awhile !
We have been boys together, — school-fellows, —
And now are friends, — yet shall not be so long:
For in the eternal city thou shalt do me
A kind and gentle office, and a Power —

126 SCENES FROM " POLITIAN."

A Power august, benignant, and supreme —
Shall then absolve thee of all further duties
Unto thy friend.

BaL Thou speakest a fearful riddle
I will not understand.

Pol. Yet now as Fate

Approaches, and the Hours are breathing low,
The sands of Time are changed to golden grains.
And dazzle me, Baldazzar. Alas ! alas !
I cannot die, having within my heart
So keen a relish for the beautiful
As hath been kindled within it. Methinks the air
Is balmier now than it was wont to be.
Rich melodies are floating in the winds ;
A rarer loveliness bedecks the earth ;
And with a holier lustre the quiet moon
Sitteth in heaven. Hist ! hist ! thou canst not say
Thou nearest not now, Baldazzar !

BaL Indeed, I hear not.

Pol. Not hear it? Listen, now! — listen! — the

faintest sound,

And yet the sweetest that ear ever heard !
A lady's voice ! — and sorrow in the tone !
Baldazzar, it oppresses me like a spell !
Again ! — again ! — how solemnly it falls
Into my heart of hearts ! That eloquent voice
Surely I never heard : yet it were well
Had I but heard it, with its thrilling tones,
In earlier days?

Bal. I myself hear it now.
Be still ! The voice, if I mistake not greatly,
Proceeds from yonder lattice, — which you may see

SCENES FROM " POLITIA N." 12J

Very plainly through the window. It belongs,
Does it not, unto this palace of the Duke?
The singer is undoubtedly beneath
The roof of his Excellency ; and perhaps
Is even that Alessandra of whom he spake
As the betrothed of Castiglione,
His son and heir.
Pol. Be still ! It comes again !

Voice " And is thy heart so strong
(very faintly) . As for to leave me thus,

Who hath loved thee so long,
In wealth and woe among?
And is thy heart so strong
As for to leave me thus?

Say nay ! — say nay ! "

Bal. The song is English, and I oft have heard it
In merry England, — never so plaintively :
Hist ! hist ! — it conies again !
Voice "Is it so strong
(niore loudly) . As for to leave me thus,

Who hath loved thee so long,
In wealth and woe among?
And is thy heart so strong
As for to leave me thus ?

Say nay ! — say nay ! "
Bal. Tis hushed, and all is still !
Pol. All is not still.
Bal. Let us go down.
Pol. Go down, Baldazzar, go !
Bal. The hour is growing late. The Duke awaits

us :

Thy presence is expected in the hall
Below. What ails thee, Earl Politian?

128 SCENES FROM " POLITIA N."

Voice " Who hath loved thee so long,
(distinctly}. In wealth and woe among
And is thy heart so strong?
Say nay ! — say nay ! "

Bal. Let us descend ! — 'tis time ! Politian, give
These fancies to the wind. Remember, pray,
Your bearing lately savored much of rudeness
Unto the Duke. Arouse thee ! and remember !

Pol. Remember? I do. Lead on! I do re
member. (Going.}
Let us descend. Believe me, I would give —
Freely would give — the broad lands of my earldom
To look upon the face hidden by yon lattice.
" To gaze upon that veiled face, and hear
Once more that silent tongue."

Bal. Let me beg you, sir,
Descend with me : the Duke may be offended.
Let us go down, I pray you.

Voice (loudly} . Say nay ! — Say nay !

Pol. (aside} . Tis strange ! — 'tis very strange !
Methought the voice
Chimed in with my desires, and bade me stay.

(Approaching the window.}
Sweet voice ! I heed thee, and will surely stay.
Now be this Fancy, by Heaven, or be it Fate,
Still will I not descend. Baldazzar, make
Apology unto the Duke for me :
I go not down to-night.

Bal. Your lordship's pleasure
Shall be attended to. Good-night, Politian.

Pol. Good-night, my friend, good-night.

SCENES FROM "POLITIAN." 129

IV.

The gardens of a Palace — Moonlight. Lalage and Politian.

Lalage, And dost thou speak of love
To me, Politian? Dost thou speak of love
To Lalage ? Ah, woe ! — ah, woe is me !
This mockery is most cruel ! — most cruel, indeed !

Politian, Weep not ! Oh, sob not thus ! Thy

bitter tears

Will madden me. Oh, mourn not, Lalage !
Be comforted ! I know — I know it all, —
And still I speak of love. Look at me, brightest,
And beautiful Lalage ! Turn here thine eyes !
Thou askest me if I could speak of love,
Knowing what I know, and seeing what I have

seen.

Thou askest me that ; and thus I answer thee, —
Thus on my bended knee I answer thee.

(Kneeling.)

Sweet Lalage, / love thee — love thee — love thee ;
Through good and ill — through weal and woe — I

love thee.

Not mother, with her first-born on her knee,
Thrills with intenser love than 1 for thee.
Not on God's altar, in any time or clime,
Burned there a holier fire than burneth now
Within my spirit for thee. And do I love?

(Arising.}

Even for thy woes I love thee ! — even for thy woes ! —
Thy beauty and thy woes.

Lai. Alas, proud Earl,
And dost forget thyself, remembering mei

130 SCEA'ES FROM " POLITIA N?

How, in thy father's halls, among the maidens

Pure and reproachless of thy princely line,

Could the dishonored Lalage abide ?

Thy wife, and with a tainted memory?

My seared and blighted name, how wou-d it tally

With the ancestral honors of thy house,

And with thy glory?

Pol. Speak not to me of glory !
I hate — I loathe the nam ! I do abhor
The unsatisfactory and ideal thing.
Art thou not Lalag and I Politian?
Do I not love ? Art thou not beautiful ?
What need we more ? Ha ! glory ! Now speak not

of it!

By all I hold most sacred and most solemn, —
By all my wishes now, — my fears hereafter, —
By all I scorn on earth and hope in heaven,—
There is no deed 1 would more glory in
Than in thy cause to scoff at this same glory,
And trample it under foot. What matters it —
What matters it, my fairest and my best,
That we go down unhonored and forgotten
Into the dust, — so we descend together ?
Descend together, and then — and then, perchanca, —

Lai. Why dost thou pause, Politian?

Pol. And then, perchance,
Arise together, Lalage, and roam
The starry and quiet dwellings of the blest,
And still

Lai. Why dost thou pause, Politian?

Pol. And still together — together

Lai. Now, Earl of Leicester,

SCENES FROM "POLITIAN." 131

Thoi> lovest me ! And in my heart of hearts
I feel thou lovest me truly.

Pol. Oh, Lalage ! (Throwing himself upon his
knee.} And lovest thou me?

LaL Hist ! hush ! Within the gloom
Of yonder trees methought a figure passed, —
A spectral figure, solemn, and slow, and noiseless, —
Like the grim shadow Conscience, solemn and noise
less. (Walks across and returns.)
I was mistaken : 'twas but a giant bough
Stirred by the autumn wind. Politian !

Pol. My Lalage — my love ! why art thou moved?
Why dost thou turn so pale ? Not Conscience self,
Far less a shadow, which thou 'ikenest to it,
Should shake the firm spirit thus. But the night

wind

Is chilly, — and these melancholy boughs
Throw over all things a gloom.

Lai. Politian !

Thou speakest to me of love. Knowest thou the land
With which all tongues are busy, — a land new

found, —

Miraculously found by one of Genoa, —
A thousand leagues within the golden west? —
A fairy land of flowers, and fruit, and sunshine,
And crystal lakes, and over-arching forests,
And mountains, around whose towering summits the

winds

Of Heaven untramelled flow, — which air to breathe
Is Happiness now, and will be Freedom hereafter,
In days that are to come?

PoL Oh, wilt thou — wilt thou

132 SCENES FROM " POLITIA N.n

Fly to that Paradise ? My Lalage, wilt thou

Fly thither with me ? Ther? Care shall be forgotten,

And Sorrow shall be no more, and Eros be all.

And life shall then be mine ; for I will live

For thee, and in thine eyes ; and thou shalt be

No more a mourner, but the radiant Joys

Shall wait upon thee, and the angel Hope

Attend thee ever ; and I will kneel to thee

And worship thee, and call thee my beloved, —

My own, my beautiful, my love, my wife,

My all ! Oh, wilt thou — wilt thou, Lalage,

Fly thither with me?

Lai. A deed is to be done :
Castiglione lives !

Pol. And he shall die ! (Exit.')

Lai. (after a paitse) . And — he — shall — die ! —
Alas ! Castiglione die ! Who spoke the words?
Where am I? What was it he said? Politian !
Thou art not gone ! — thou art not gone, Politian.
I feel thou art not gone, — yet dare not look,
Lest I behold thee not ! Thou couldst not go
With those words upon thy lips ! Oh, speak to me,
And let me hear thy voice ! — one word — one word
To say thou art not gone ! — one little sentence
To say how thou dost scorn — how thou dost hate
My womanly weakness ! Ha ! ha ! thou art not

gone!

Oh, speak to me ! I knew thou wouldst not go !
I knew thou wouldst not, couldst not, durst not go !
Villain, thou art not gone ! Thou mockest me !

And thus I clutch thee — thus ! He is gone ! —

he is gone ! —

SCENES FROM ''POLITIAN." 133

Gone, — gone ! Where am I ? 'Tis well ! — 'tis very

well !

So that the blade be keen — the blow be sure!
'Tis well ! — His very well ! Alas ! alas !

V.

The suburbs. Politian alone.

Politian. This weakness grows upon me. I am

faint.

And much I fear me ill. It will not do
To die ere I have lived ! Stay — stay thy hand,
Oh, Azrael, yet a while ! Prince of the Powers
Of Darkness and the Tomb, oh pity me !
Oh, pity me ! Let me not perish now
In the budding of my Paradisal Hope !
Give me to live yet — yet a little while.
Tis I who pray for life ! — I who so late
Demanded but to die! What sayeth the Count?
Enter Baldazzar.

Baldazzar. That knowing no cause of quarrel or

feud

Between the Earl Politian and himself,
He doth decline your cartel.

Pol. What didst thou say?

What answer was it you brought me, good Baldaz
zar?

With what excessive fragrance the zephyr comes
Laden from yonder bowers ! A fairer day,
Or one more worthy Italy, methinks
No mortal eyes have seen ! What said the Count?

Bal. That he, Castiglione, not being aware
Of any feud existing, or any cause

134 SCENES FROM "POLITIAN."

Of quarrel between your lordship and himself,
Cannot accept the challenge.

Pol. It is most true !

All this is very true. When saw you, sir, —
When saw you now, Baldazzar, in the frigid
Ungenial Britain, which we left so lately,
A heaven so calm as this ? — so utterly free
From the evil taint of clouds ? And he did say f

BaL No more, my lord, than I have told you,

sir.

The Count Castiglione will not fight,
Having no cause for quarrel.

Pol. Now this is true :

All very true. Thou art my friend, Baldazzar,
And I have not forgotten it. ThouPt do me
A piece of service. Wilt thou go back and say
Unto this man, that I, the Earl of Leicester,
Hold him a villain? Thus much, I prythee, say
Unto the Count. It is exceeding just
He should have cause for quarrel.

BaL My lord ! — My friend ! —

Pol. (aside). 'Tis he! He comes himself!

(Aloud). Thou reasonest well.

I know what thou wouldst say, — not send the mes
sage.

Well, I will think of it ; I will not send it !
Now, prithee, leave me. Hither doth come a person
With whom affairs of a most private nature
I would adjust.

Bal. I go. To-morrow we meet,
Do we not, at the Vatican?

Pol. At the Vatican. (Exit Bal}.

SCENES FROM " POLITIAN. 135

(Enter Castiglione .)

Castiglione. The Earl of Leicester here ?

Pol. I am the Earl of Leicester, and thou seest,
Dost thou not, that I am here.

Cas. My lord, some strange —
Some singular mistake — misunderstanding —
Hath without doubt, arisen. Thou hast been urged
Thereby, in heat of anger, to address
Some words most unaccountable, in writing,
To me, Castiglione, — the bearer being
Baldazzar, Duke of Surrey. I am aware
Of nothing which might warrant thee in this thing,
Having given thee no offence. Ha! am I right?
'Twas a mistake, undoubtedly. We all
Do err at times.

Pol. Draw, villain, and prate no more !

Cas. Ha ! draw ! and villain !
Have at thee, then, at once, proud Earl ! (Draws.

Pol. (drawing). Thus to the expiatory tomb,
Untimely sepulchre, I do devote thee,
In the name of Lalage !

Cas. (letting fall his sword, and recoiling to the ex
tremity of the stage.)
Of Lalage !

Hold off — thy sacred hand ! Avaunt, I say !
A vaunt ! I will not fight thee! Indeed, I dare not.

Pol. Thou wilt not fight with me, didst say, Sir

Count?

Shall I be bafHed thus? Now, this is well !
Didst say thou darest not ? Ha !

Cas. I dare not ! — dare not !
Hold off thy hand ! With that beloved name

136 SCENES FROM " POLITIAN?

So fresh upon thy lips I will not fight thee !
I cannot ! — dare not !

Pol. Now, by my halidom,
I do believe thee ! Coward, I do believe thee !

Cas. Ha ! — coward ! This may not be !

(Clutches his sword, and staggers toward Politian,
but his purpose is changed before reaching him,
and he falls upon his knee at the feet of the
Earl.)

Alas ! alas ! my lord, it is — it is — most true !
In such a cause I am the veriest coward. Oh, pity me !

Pol. (greatly softened}. Alas! I do! Indeed, I
pity thee !

Cas. And Lalage — *—

Pol. Scoundrel ! Arise, and die !

Cas. It needeth not be — thus — thus — oh, let

me die

Thus on my bended knee. It were most fitting
That in this deep humiliation I perish.
For in the fight I will not raise a hand
Against thee, Earl of Leicester. Strike thou home !

(Baring his bosom.}

Here is no let or hinderance to thy weapon !
Strike home ! I will not fight thee !

Pol. Now s' Death and Hell !
Am I not — -"am I not sorely — grievously tempted
To take thee at thy word? But mark me, sir :
Think not to fly me thus ! Do thou prepare
For public insult in the streets, before
The eyes of the citizens. I'll follow thee, —
Like an avenging spirit Til follow thee
Even unto death. Before those whom thou lovest— '

SCENES FROM " POLITIAN." 137

Before all Rome Til taunt thee, villain ! — I'll taunt

thee,
Dost hear? with cowardice ! Thou wilt not fight

me?
Thou liest ! Thou shall ! (Exit.)

Cas. Now, this indeed is just !
Most righteous, and most just, avenging Heaven.

138 SONNET.— TO SCIENCE.

POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH.1

SONNET. — TO SCIENCE.

SCIENCE ! True daughter of Old Time thou art !

Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,

Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,

Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jeweled skies,

Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?

And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?

Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

1 Private reasons — some of which have reference to the sin of
plagiarism, and others to the date of Tennyson's first poems — have
induced me, after some hesitation, to republish these, the crude compo
sitions of my earliest boyhood. They are printed verbatim, without
alteration from the original edition, the date of which is too remote to
be judiciously acknowledged. — E. A. P.

AL AAKAAF. 139

AL AARAAF1

PART I.

OH, nothing earthly save the ray

(Thrown back from flowers) of Beauty's eye,

As in those gardens where the day

Springs from the gems of Circassy —

Oh, nothing earthly save the thrill

Of melody in woodland rill —

Or (music of the passion-hearted)

Joy's voice so peacefully departed

That like the murmur in the shell,

Its echo dwelleth and will dwell —

Oh, nothing of the dross of ours —

Yet all the Beauty — all the flowers

That list our Love, and deck our bowers —

Adorn yon world afar, afar,

The wandering star.

'Twas a sweet time for Nesace — for there
Her world lay lolling on the golden air,
Near four bright suns — a temporary rest —
An oasis in desert of the blest.

1 A star was discovered by Tycho Brahe, which appeared suddenly
in the heavens; attained, in a few days, a brilliancy surpassing that of
Jupiter; then as suddenly disappeared, and has never been seen since.

140 AL AARAAF.

Away — away — 'mid seas of rays that roll

Empyrean splendor o'er the unchained soul —

The soul that scarce (the billows are so dense)

Can struggle to its destinM eminence —

To distant spheres, from time to time, she rode,

And late to ours, the favor'd one of God,

But now the ruler of an anchor'd realm,

She throws aside the sceptre — leaves the helm.

And, amid incense and high spiritual hymns,

Laves in quadruple light her angel limbs.

Now happiest, loveliest in yon lovely Earth,
Whence sprang the " Idea of Beauty" into birth,
(Falling in wreaths thro1 many a startled star,
Like woman's hair 'mid pearls, until, afar,
It lit on hills Achaian, and there dwelt)
She look'd into Infinity — and knelt.
Rich clouds, for canopies, about her curled —
Fit emblems of the model of her world — •
Seen but in beauty — not impeding sight
Of other beauty glittering thro1 the light —
A wreath that twined each starry form around,
And all the opaPd air in color bound.

All hurriedly she knelt upon a bed
Of flowers : of lilies such as rear'd the head
On the fair Capo Deucato,1 and sprang
So eagerly around about to hang
Upon the flying footsteps of — deep pride —
Of her who lov'd a mortal — and so died.2
The Sephalica, budding with young bees,
Uprear'd its purple stem around her knees :

1 On Santa Maura — olim Deucadia. 2 Sappho.

AL AARAAF. 141

And gemmy flower, of Trebizond misnamed1 —
Inmate of highest stars, where erst it sham'd
All other loveliness : its honied dew
(The fabled nectar that the heathen knew)
Deliriously sweet, was dropped from Heaven^
And fell on gardens of the unforgiven
In Trebizond — and on a sunny flower
So like its own above, that to this hour
It still remaineth, torturing the bee
With madness, and unwonted reverie :
In Heaven, and all its environs, the leaf
And blossom of the fairy plant, in grief
Disconsolate linger, — grief that hangs her head,
Repenting follies that full long have fled,
Heaving her white breast to the balmy air,
Like guilty beauty, chastened, and more fair :
Nyctanthes too, as sacred as the light
She fears to perfume, perfuming the night:
And Clytia 2 pondering between many a sun,
While pettish tears adown her petals run :
And that aspiring flower that sprang on Earth
And died, ere scarce exalted into birth, 8

1 This flower is much noticed by Lewenhoeck and Tournefort.
The bee, feeding upon its blossom, becomes intoxicated.

2 Clytia, — the Chrysanthemum Peruvianum, or, to employ a better
known term, the Turnsol, — which turns continually toward the sun,
covers itself, like Peru, the country from which it comes, with dewy
clouds which cool and refresh its flowers during the most violent heat
of the day. — B. DE ST. PIERRE.

3 There is cultivated in the king's garden at Paris, a species of ser
pentine aloes without prickles, whose large and beautiful flower exhales
a strong odor of the vanilla, during the time of its expansion, which is
very short. It does not blow till toward the month of July You
then perceive it gradually open its petals, expand them, fade, and die.

— ST. PlERRK.

142 AL AARAAF.

Bursting its odorous heart in spirit to wing
Its way to Heaven, from garden of a king :
And Valesnerian lotus 1 thither flown
From struggling with the waters of the Rhone :
And thy most lovely purple perfume, Zante ! '2
Isola d'oro ! Fior di Levante !
And the Nelumbo bud 8 that floats forever
With Indian Cupid down the holy river —
Fair flowers, and fairy ! to whose care is given
To bear the Goddess1 song in odors up to Heaven : 4
" Spirit! that dwellest where,

In the deep sky,
The terrible and fair,

In beauty vie !
Beyond the line of blue —

The boundary of the star
Which turneth at the view

Of thy barrier and thy bar —
Of the barrier overgone

By the comets who were cast
From their pride and from their throne,

To be drudges till the last —
To be carriers of fire

(The red fire of their heart)
With speed that may not tire

1 There is found, in the Rhone, a beautiful lily of the Valisnerian
kind. Its stem will stretch to the length of three or four feet, thua
preserving its head above water in the swellings of the river.

2 The hyacinth.

8 It is a fiction of the Indians, that Cupid was first seen floating in
one of these down the river Ganges, and that he still loves the cradle
of his childhood.

4 And golden vials, full of odors, which are the prayers of the
saints. — REV. ST. JOHN.

AL AARAAF. 143

And with pain that shall not part— »
Who livest — that we know —

In Eternity — we feel —
But the shadow of whose brow

What spirit shall reveal?
Thro1 the beings whom thy Nesace,

Thy messenger hath known
Have dreanrfd for thy Infinity

A model of their own.1
Thy will is done, oh God!

The star hath ridden high
Thro' many a tempest, but she rode

Beneath thy burning eye ;
And here, in thought, to thee —

In thought that can alone
Ascend thy empire, and so be

1 The Humanitarians held that God was to be understood as having
really a human form. — Vide Clarke's Sermons, vol. i. p. 26, fol. edit.
The drift of Milton's argument leads him to employ language which
would appear, at first sight, to verge upon their doctrine ; but it will
be seen immediately that he guards himself against the charge of hav
ing adopted one of the most ignorant errors of the dark ages of the
church. — Dr. Sumner s Notes on Milton 's Christian Doctrine,

This opinion, in spite of many testimonies to the contrary, could
never have been very general. Andeus, a Syrian of Mesopotamia,
was condemned for the opinion, as heretical. He lived in the begin
ning of the fourth century. His disciples were called Anthropo-
morphites. — Vide Du Pin*

Among Milton's minor poems are these lines : —

Dicite sacrorum praesides nemorum Deae,

Quis ille primus cujus ex imagir.e

Natura solers finxit humanum genus?

Eternus, incorruptus, aequaevus polo,

Unusque et universus exemplar Dei.
And afterwards : —

Non cui profundum Caecitas lumen dedit

Dircasus augur vidit hunc alto sum, etc.

144 AL AARAAF.

A partner of thy throne —
By winged Fantasy,1

My embassy is given,
Till secrecy shall knowledge be

In the environs of Heaven."
She ceased : and buried then her burning cheek
AbasrTd amid the lilies there, to seek
A shelter from the fervor of His eye ;
For the stars trembled at the Deity.
She stirrM not — breath'd not — for a voice was

there

How solemnly pervading the calm air !
A sound of silence on the startled ear
Which dreamy poets name " the music of the sphere.11
Ours is a world of words : Quiet we call
" Silence, " — which is the merest word of all.
All Nature speaks, and ev'n ideal things
Flap shadowy sounds from visionary wings :
But ah ! why not so when, thus, in realms on high
The eternal voice of God is passing by,
And the red winds are withering in the sky !

"What tho1 in worlds which sightless2 cycles run,
LinkM to a little system, and one sun —
Where all my love is folly, and the crowd
Still think my terrors but the thunder-cloud,
The storm, the earthquake, and the ocean wrath
(Ah ! will they cross me in my angrier path?^

1 Seltsamen Tochter Jovis
Seinem Schosskinde
Dcr Phantasie. — GOETHE.
8 Sightless — too small to be seen. — LEGGB.

AL AARAAF. 145

What tho1 in worlds which own a single sun

The sands of Time grow dimmer as they run,

Yet thine is my resplendency, so given

To bear my secrets thro1 the upper Heaven,

Leave tenantless thy crystal home, and fly,

With all thy train, athwart the moony sky —

Apart — like fireflies1 in Sicilian night,

And wing to other worlds another light !

Divulge the secrets of thy embassy

To the proud orbs that twinkle — and so be

To evry heart a barrier and a ban

Lest the stars totter in the guilt of man ! "

Up rose the maiden in the yellow night,
The single-mooned eve ! — on Earth we plight
Our faith to one love — and one moon adore —
The birthplace of young Beauty had no more.
As sprang that yellow star from downy hours,
Up rose the maiden from her shrine of flowers,
And bent o'er sheeny mountain and dim plain
Her way, but left not yet her Therasaean2 reign.

PART II.

High on a mountain of enamel'd head —
Such as the drowsy shepherd on his bed
Of giant pasturage lying at his ease,
Raising his heavy eyelid, starts and sees

1 I have often noticed a peculiar movement of the fireflies. They
will collect in a body and fly off, from a common centre, into in
numerable radii.

2 Therasjea, or Therasea, the island mentioned by Seneca, which in
: moment arose from the sea to the eyes of astonished mariners.

146 AL AARAAF.

With many a mutter'd " hope to be forgiven"

What time the moon is quadrated in Heaven —

Of rosy herd, that towering far away

Into the sunlit ether, caught the ray

Of sunken suns at eve — at noon of night,

While the moon danc'd with the fair stranger

light —

Uprear'd upon such height arose a pile
Of gorgeous columns on th' unburthen'd air,
Flashing from Parian marble that twin smile
Far down upon the wave that sparkled there,
And nursled the young mountain in its lair.
Of molten stars 1 their pavement, such as fall
Thro' the ebon air besilvering the pall
Of their own dissolution, while they die —
Adorning then the dwellings of the sky.
A dome, by linked light from Heaven let down,
Sat gently on these columns as a crown —
A window of one circular diamond, there,
Look'd out above into the purple air,
And rays from God shot down that meteor chain
And hallow'd all the beauty twice again,
Save when, between th' Empyrean and that ring,
Some eager spirit flapp'd his dusky wing.
But on the pillars seraph eyes have seen
The dimness of this world : that grayish green
That Nature loves the best for Beauty's grave
Lurk'd in each cornice, round each architrave —
And every sculptur'd cherub thereabout
That from his marble dwelling peered out,

1 Some star, which, from the ruin'd roof
Of shak'd Olympus, by mischance did fall. — MILTON.

AL AARAAF. 14?

Seem'd earthly in the shadow of his niche —
Achaian statues in a world so rich?
Friezes from Tadmor and Persepolis,1 —
From Balbec, and the stilly, clear abyss
Of beautiful Gomorrah ! 2 Oh, the wave
Is now upon thee — Dut too late to save !

Sound loves to revel in a summer night :
Witness the murmur of the gray twilight
That stole upon the ear, in Eyraco,8
Of many a wild star-gazer long ago —
That stealeth ever on the ear of him
Who, musing, gazeth on the distance dim,
And sees the darkness coming as a cloud —
Is not its form — its voice — most palpable and loud ?4

But what is this? It cometh, and it brings
A music with it : 'tis the rush of wings.

1 Voltaire, in speaking of Persepolis, says : " Je connois bien
1'admiration qu'inspirent ces mines — mais un palais erige au pied d'une
chaine des rochers sterils — peut-il etre un chef-d'oeuvre des arts! "

2 " Oh the wave " — Ula Deguisi is the Turkish appellation ; but on
its shores, it is called Bahar Loth, or Almotanah. There were un
doubtedly more than two cities ingulfed in the " Dead Sea." In the
valley of Siddam were five — Adrah, Zeboin, Zoar, Sodom, and Go
morrah. Stephen of Byzantium mentions eight, and Strabo thirteen
(ingulfed) — but the last is out of all reason.

It is said [Tacitus, Strabo, Josephus, Daniel of St. Saba, Nau,
Maundrell, Troilo, D'Arvieux] that after an excessive drought, the
vestiges of columns, walls, etc., are seen above the surface. At any
season, such remains may be discovered by looking down into the
transparent lake and at such distances as would argue the existence of
many settlements in the space now usurped by the " Asphaltites."

3 Eyraco — Chaldea.

4 I have often thought I could .distinctly hear the sound of the dark
ness as it stole over the horizon.

148 AL AARAAF.

A pause — and then a sweeping, falling strain,
And Nesace is in her halls again.
From the wild energy of wanton haste

Her cheeks were flushing, and her lips apart ;
And zone that clung around her gentle waist

Had burst beneath the heaving of her heart.
Within the centre of that hall to breathe
She paus'd and panted, Zanthe ! all beneath,
The fairy light that kiss'd her golden hair,
And long'd to rest, yet could but sparkle there !

Young flowers l were whispering in melody
To happy flowers that night — and tree to tree ;
Fountains were gushing music as they fell
In many a star-lit grove, or moon-lit dell ;
Yet silence came upon material things —
Fair flowers, bright waterfalls, and angel wings,
And sound alone that from the spirit sprang
Bore burthen to the charm the maiden sang : —

*' 'Neath bluebell or streamer,

Or tufted wild spray,
That keeps from the dreamer

The moonbeam away : 2 —
Bright beings that ponder,

With half-closing eyes,
On the stars which your wonder

Hath drawn from the skies,

1 Fairies use flowers for their charactery. — Merry Wives of
Windsor.

2 In Scripture is this passage: "The sun shall not harm thee by
day, nor the moon by night." It is perhaps not generally known that
the moon, in Egypt, has the effect of producing blindness to those
who sleep with the face exposed to its rays, to which circumstance the
passage evidently alludes

AL AARAAF. 149

Till they glance thro1 the shade, and

Come down to your brow
Like eyes of the maiden

Who calls on you now, —
Arise from your dreaming

In violet bowers,
To duty beseeming

These star-litten hours, —
And shake from your tresses

Encumber'd with dew
The breath of those kisses

That cumber them too —
(Oh, how, without you, Love,

Could angels be blest ?)
Those kisses of true love

That lull'd ye to rest !
Up ! shake from your wing

Each hindering thing :
The dew of the night —

It would weigh down your flight ;
And true love caresses —

Oh, leave them apart !
They are light on the tresses,

But lead on the heart.
Ligeia ! Ligeia !

My beautiful one !
Whose harshest idea

Will to melody run,
Oh, is it thy will

On the breezes to toss ?
Or, capriciously still,

Like the lone albatross,1

1 The albatross is said to sleep on the wing.

150 AL AARAAF.

Incumbent on night

(As she on the air)
To keep watch with delight

On the harmony there ?

" Ligeia ! wherever

Thy image may be,
No magic shall sever

Thy music from thee.
Thou hast bound many eyes

In a dreamy sleep,
But the strains still arise

Which thy vigilance keep —
The sound of the rain

Which leaps down to the flower,
And dances again

In the rhythm of the shower —
The murmur that springs 1

From the growing of grass
Are the music of things —

But are modeled, alas !
Away, then, my dearest,

Oh, hie thee away
To springs that lie clearest

Beneath the moon-ray, —
To lone lake that smiles

In its dream of deep rest,
At the many star-isles

That enjewel its breast, —

1 I met with this idea in an old English tale, which I am now unable
to obtain, and quote from memory: "The verie essence, and, as it
were, spnnge-heade and origine of all musich^ is the verie pleasaunte
sounde which the trees of the forest do make whsn they growe."

AL AARAAF. 151

Where wild flowers, creeping,

Have mingled their shade,
On its margin is sleeping

Full many a maid :
Some have left the cool glade, and

Have slept with the bee,1 —
Arouse them, my maiden,

On moorland and lea, —
Go, breathe on their slumber,

All softly in ear, —
The musical number

They slumber'd to hear, —
For what can awaken

An angel so soon,
Whose sleep hath been taken

Beneath the cold moon,
As the spell which no slumber

Of witchery may test,
The rhythmical number

Which lull'd him to rest ? "

Spirits in wing, and angels to the view,
A thousand seraphs burst th' Empyrean through,
Young dreams still hovering on their drowsy flight,
Seraphs in all but " Knowledge," the keen light

1 The wild bee will not sleep in the shade if there be moonlight.
The rhyme in this verse, as in one about sixty lines before, has an
appearance of affectation. It is, however, imitated from Sir Walter
Scott, or rather from Claud Halcro, — in whose mouth I admired its
effect : —

" Oh, were there an island,

Though ever so wild,
Where woman might smile, and
No man be beguil'd."

I52 AL AARAAF.

That fell, refracted, through thy bounds, afar

Oh, Death ! from eye of God upon that star:

Sweet was that error — sweeter still that death, —

Sweet was that error — ev'n with us the breath

Of Science dims the mirror of our joy, —

To them 'twere the Simoon, and would destroy, -

For what (to them) availeth it to know

That Truth is Falsehood, or that Bliss is Woe ?

Sweet was their death : with them to die was rife

With the last ecstasy of satiate life ; —

Beyond that death no immortality, —

But sleep that pondereth, and is not " to be."

And there, oh may my weary spirit dwell,

Apart from Heaven's Eternity, — and yet how far

from Hell ! 1

With guilty spirit, in what shrubbery dim,
Heard not the stirring summons of that hymn ?
But two : they fell : for Heaven no grace imparts
To those who hear not for their beating hearts.

1 With the Arabians there is a medium between Heaven and Hell,
where men suffer no punishment, but yet do not attain that tranquil
and even happiness which they suppose to be characteristic of heavenly
enjoyment.

Un no rompido sueno —

Un dia puro — allegre — libre

Quiera —

Libre de amor — de zelo —

Deodio — de esperanza — de rezelo. — Luis PONCE DE LEON.

Sorrow is not excluded from " Al Aaraaf," but it is that sorrow
•which the living love to cherish for the dead, and which, in some
minds, resembles the delirium of opium. The passionate excitement
of Love and the buoyancy of spirit attendant upon intoxication are its
less holy pleasures, — the price of which, to those souls who make
choice of " Al Aaraaf " as the residence after life, is final death and
annihilation.

AL AARAAF. 153

A maiden-angel and her seraph lover —
Oh, where (and ye may seek the wide skies over)
Was Love, the blind, near sober Duty known ?
Unguided Love hath fallen — 'mid "tears of perfect

moan."1

He was a goodly spirit — he who fell :
A wanderer by mossy-mantled well, —
A gazer on the lights that shine above, —
A dreamer in the moonbeam by his love !
What wonder ? for each star is eyelike there,
And looks so sweetly down on Beauty's hair ;
And they, and every mossy spring were holy
To his love-haunted heart and melancholy.
The night had found (to him a night of woe)
Upon a mountain crag, young Angelo, —
Beetling, it bends athwart the solemn sky,
And scowls on starry worlds that down beneath it lie.
Here sate he with his love, — his dark eye bent
With eagle gaze along the firmament :
Now turn'd it upon her, — but ever then
It trembled to the orb of EARTH again.

" lanthe, dearest, see, how dim that ray!

How lovely 'tis to look so far away !

She seem'd not thus upon that autumn eve

1 left her gorgeous halk, — nor mourned to leave.

That eve — that eve — I should remember well —

The sun-ray dropp'd, in Lemnos, with a spell

On th' Arabesque carving of a gilded hall

Wherein 1 sate, and on the draperied wall —

1 There he tears of perfect moan
Wept for thee in Helicon. — MILTON.

154 AL AARAAF.

And on my eyelids — oh, the heavy light!

How drowsily it weigh'd them into night !

On flowers, before, and mist, and love they ran

With Persian Saadi in his Gulistan :

But oh, that light ! — I slumber'd — Death, the

while,

Stole o'er my senses in that lovely isle
So softly that no single silken hair
Awoke that slept, — or knew that he was there.

" The last spot of Earth's orb I trod upon
Was a proud temple calPd the Parthenon.1
More beauty clung around her column'd wall
Than ev'n thy glowing bosom beats withal,2
And when old Time my wing did disenthrall,
Thence sprang I, as the eagle from his tower,
And years I left behind me in an hour.
What time upon her airy bounds I hung
One half the garden of her globe was flung
Unrolling as a chart unto my view
Tenantless cities of the desert, too !
lanthe, beauty crowded on me, then,
And half I wish'd to be again of men."

" My Angelo ! and why of them to be?
A brighter dwelling-place is here for thee ;
And greener fields than in yon world above,
And woman's loveliness — and passionate love."
" But, list, lanthe ! when the air so soft

1 It was entire in 1687, — the most elevated spot in Athens.

2 Shadowing more beauty in their airy brows

Than have the white breasts of the Queen of Love. — MARLOWE.

AL AARAAF. 155

Fail'd, as my pennorfd spirit leapt aloft,1
Perhaps my brain grew dizzy ; but the world
I left so late was into chaos hurl'd, —
Sprang from her station, on the winds apart,
And rolPd, a flame, the fiery Heaven athwart.
Methought, my sweet one, then I ceased to soar
And fell, — not swiftly as I rose before,
But with a downward, tremulous motion, through
Light, brazen rays, this golden star unto !
Nor long the measure of my falling hours :
For nearest of all stars was thine to ours, —
Dread star ! that came, amid a night of mirth,
A red Daedalion on the timid Earth.

•' We came, — and to thy Earth ; but not to us

Be given our lady's bidding to discuss :

We came, my love ; around, above, below,

Gay firefly of the night we come and go,

Nor ask a reason save the angel-nod

She grants to us, as granted by her God.

But, Angelo, than thine gray Time unfurl'd

Never his fairy wing o'er fairer world !

Dim was its little disk, and angel eyes

Alone could see the phantom in the skies,

When first Al Aaraaf knew her course to be

Headlong thitherward o'er the starry sea ;

But when its glory swelled upon the sky,

As glowing Beauty's bust beneath man's eye,

We paused before the heritage of men,

And thy star trembled, — as doth Beauty then ! "

1 Pennon — for pinion. — MILTON-

156 TAMERLANE.

Thus, in discourse, the lovers whiPd away

The night that waned and waned and brought no

day.

They fell : for Heaven to them no hope imparts
Who hear not for the beating of their hearts.

TO THE RIVER .

FAIR river ! in thy bright, clear flow

Of crystal, wandering water,
Thou art an emblem of the glow

Of beauty — the unhidden heart —
The playful maziness of art
In old Alberto's daughter ;

But when within thy wave she looks,

Which glistens then, and trembles, —
Why, then, the prettiest of brooks

Her worshipper resembles ;
For in his heart, as in thy stream,

Her image deeply lies, —
His heart which trembles at the beam

Of her soul-searching eyes.

TAMERLANE.

KIND solace in a dying hour !

Such, father, is not (now) my theme:
I will not madly deem that power

TAMERLANE. 157

Of Earth may shrive me of the sin
Unearthly pride hath revel'd in.
i have no time to dote or dream :
You call it hope — that fire of fire !
It is but agony of desire !
If I can hope — oh, God ! I can :

Its fount is holier — more divine —
I would not call thee fool, old man,
But such is not a gift of thine.

Know thou the secret of a spirit

Bo\v1d from its wild pride into shame.

Oh, yearning heart! I did inherit
Thy withering portion with the fame,

The searing glory which hath shone

Amid the jewels of my throne,

Halo of Hell ! and with a pain

Not Hell shall make me fear again !

Oh, craving heart, for the lost flowers

And sunshine of my summer hours !

The undying voice of that dead time,

With its interminable chime,

Rings, in the spirit of a spell,

Upon thy emptiness — a knell.

I have not always been as now :
The fever'd diadem on my brow
I claim'd and won usurpingly.
Hath not the same fierce heirdom given
Rome to the Caesar — this to me ?
The heritage of a kingly mind,
And a proud spirit which hath striven
Triumphantly with human kind.

158 TAMERLANE.

On mountain soil I first drew life :
The mists of the Taglay have shed
Nightly their dews upon my head ;

And, I believe, the winged strife

And tumult of the headlong air

Have nestled in my very hair.

So late from Heaven — that dew — it fell

('Mid dreams of an unholy night)
Upon me with a touch of Hell,

While the red flashing of the light
From clouds that hung like banners o'er,

Appeared to my half-closing eye

The pageantry of monarchy :
And the deep trumpet-thunder's roar

Came hurriedly upon me, telling
Of human battle, where my voice —

My own voice, silly child ! — was swelling
(Oh, how my spirit would rejoice,

And leap within me at the cry)

The battle-cry of Victory !

The rain came down upon my head
Unsheltered ; and the heavy wind
Rendered me mad and deaf and blind.
It was but man, I thought, who shed
Laurels upon me : and the rush —

The torrent of the chilly air
Gurgled within my ear the crush

Of empires — with the captive's prayer
The hum of suitors — and the tone
Of flattery round a sovereign's throne.

TAMERLANE. 159

My passions, from that hapless hour,

Usurped a tyranny which men
Have deem'd, since I have reach'd to power,
My innate nature : be it so.

But, father, there lived one who, then,
Then — in my boyhood — when their fire

Burn'd with a still intenser glow
(For passion must, with youth, expire)

E'en then who knew this iron heart

In woman's weakness had a part.

I have no words, alas ! to tell
The loveliness of loving well!
Nor would I now attempt to trace
The more than beauty of a face
Whose lineaments, upon my mind,
Are — shadows on th1 unstable wind.
Thus I remember having dwelt

Some page of early lore upon,
With loitering eye, till I have felt
The letters — with their meaning — melt

To fantasies — with none.

Oh, she was worthy of all love !

Love, as in infancy was mine !
'Twas such as angel minds above

Might envy ; her young heart the shrine
On which my every hope and thought

Were incense, — then a goodly gift,

For they were childish and upright, —
Pure, — as her young example taught :

Why did I leave it, and, adrift,
Trust to the fiVe within for light?

160 TAMERLANE.

We grew in age — and love — together —
Roaming the forest and the wild ;

My breast her shield in wintry weather,
And when the friendly sunshine smiTd,

And she would mark the opening skies,

I saw no Heaven — but in her eyes.

Young Love's first lesson is — the heart:

For 'mid that sunshine, and those smiles.
When, from our little cares apart,

And laughing at her girlish wiles,
Td throw me on her throbbing breast,

And pour my spirit out in tears ;
There was no need to speak the rest, —

No need to quiet any fears
Of her, — who ask'd no reason why,
But turn'd on me her quiet eye !

Yet more than worthy of the love
My spirit struggled with, and strove
When, on the mountain-peak, alone;
Ambition lent it a new tone, —
I had no being but in thee.

The world, and all it did contain
In the earth — the air — the sea —

Its joy — its little lot of pain
That was new pleasure, — the ideal

Dim vanities of dreams by night,
And dimmer nothings which were real, --

(Shadows, and a more shadowy light!)
Parted upon their misty wings,
And so, confusedly, became
Thine image and — a name! —
Two separate yet most intimate things.

TAMERLANE. lOi

I was ambitious. Have you known

The passion, father ? You have not!
A cottager, I mark'd a throne
Of half the world as all my own,

And murmurd at such lowly lot.
But, just like any other dream,

Upon the vapor of the dew
My own had past, did not the beam

Of beauty which did while it through
The minute — the hour — the day — oppress
My mind with double loveliness.

We walk'd together on the crown

Of a high mountain which looked down

Afar from its proud natural towers

Of rock and forest, on the hills, —
The dwindled hills ! — begirt with bowers.

And spouting with a thousand rills.

I spoke to her of power and pride,

But mystically, — in such guise
That she might deem it nought beside

The moment's converse. In her eyes
I read, perhaps too carelessly,

A mingled feeling with my own.
The flush on her bright cheek, to me

Seem'd to become a queenly throne
Too well that I should let it be

Light in the wilderness alone.

I wrapped myse/f in grandeur then,
And donn'd a visionary crown :

1 62 TAMERLANE.

Yet it was not that Fantasy
Had thrown her mantle over me ;
But that, among the rabble — men,

Lion ambition is chain'd down,
And crouches to a keeper's hand :
Not so in deserts, where the grand —
The wild — the terrible — conspire
With their own breath to fan his fire.

Look round thee now on Samarcand !

Is she not queen of Earth? Her pride
Above all cities? In her hand

Their destinies ? In all beside
Of glory which the world hath known
Stands she not nobly and alone?
Falling, — her veriest stepping-stone
Shall form the pedestal of a throne !
And who her sovereign? Timour, — he

Whom the astonished people saw
Striding o'er empires haughtily, —

A diadem'd outlaw !

Oh, human love ! Thou spirit given,
On Earth, of all we hope in Heaven!
Which fall's t into the soul like rain
Upon the Siroc-wither'd plain,
And, failing in thy power to bless,
But leav'st the heart a wilderness !
Idea which bindest life around
With music of so strange a sound
And beauty of so wild a birth, —
Farewell ! for I have won the Earth !

TAMERLANE. 163

When Hope, the eagle that tower'd, could see

No cliff beyond him in the sky,
His pinions were bent droopingly,

And homeward turn'd his soften'd eye.
'Twas sunset : when the sun will part
There comes a sullenness of heart
To him who still would look upon
The glory of the summer sun.
That soul will hate the ev'ning mist,
So often lovely, and will list
To the sound of the coming darkness (known
To those whose spirits hearken) as one
Who, in a dream of night, would fly,
But cannot, from a danger nigh.

What though the moon — the white moon —

Shed all the splendor of her noon,

Her smile is chilly, and her beam,

In that time of dreariness will seem

(So like you gather in your breath)

A portrait taken after death.

And boyhood is a summer sun

Whose waning is the dreariest one.

For all we live to know is known,

And all we seek to keep hath flown :

Let life, then, as the day-flower, fall

With the noonday beauty, — which is all.

I reached my home — my home no more !

For all had flown who made it so.
I pass'd from out its mossy door,

1 64 TAMERLANE.

And, though my tread was soft and lows
A voice came from the threshold stone
Of one whom I had earlier known :
Oh, I defy thee, Hell, to show
On beds of fire that burn below,
A humbler heart — a deeper woe,

Father, I firmly do believe —

I know — for Death who comes for me

From regions of the blest afar,
Where there is nothing to deceive,

Hath left his iron gate ajar,
And rays of truth you cannot see
Are flashing through eternity, —
I do believe that Eblis hath
A snare in every human path :
Else how, when in the holy grove,
I wandered, of the idol, Love,
Who daily scents his snowy wings
With incense of burnt offerings
From the most unpolluted things,
Whose pleasant bowers are yet so riven
Above with trellis'd rays from Heaven,
No more may shun — no tiniest fly —
The lightning of his eagle eye, —
How was it that Ambition crept,
Unseen, amid the revels there,
Till, growing bold, he laughed and leapt
In the tangles of Love's very hair?

FAIRY-LAND. 165

FAIRY-LAND.

DIM vales — and shadowy floods —

And cloudy-looking woods,

Whose forms we can't discover

For the tears that drip all over :

Huge moons there wax and wane, —

Again — again — again —

Every moment of the night, —

Forever changing places, —

And they put out the starlight

With the breath from their pale faces.

About twelve by the moon-dial,

One more filmy than the rest

Comes down — still down — and down

With its centre on the crown

Of a mountain's eminence,

While its wide circumference

In easy drapery falls

Over hamlets, over halls,

Wherever they may be :

O'er the strange woods — o'er the sea —

Over spirits on the wing —

Over every drowsy thing —

And Juries them up quite

In a labyrinth of light ;

And then, how deep! — oh, deep

Is the passion of their sleep.

1 66 TO L. M. S .

In the morning they arise,

And their moony covering

Is soaring in the skies,

With the tempests as they toss,

Like — almost anything —

Or a yellow albatross.

They use that moon no more

For the same end as before, —

Videlicet, a tent,

Which I think extravagant :

Its atomies, however,

Into a shower dissever,

Of which those butterflies

Of Earth who seek the skies,

And so come down again

(Never-contented things !)

Have brought a specimen

Upon their quivering wings.

TO L. M, S .

OF all who hail thy presence as the morning, —

Of all to whom thine absence is the night, —

The blotting utterly from out high heaven

The sacred sun, — of all who, weeping, bless thee

Hourly for hope — for life — ah ! above all,

For the resurrection of deep-buried faith

In Truth — in Virtue — in Humanity, —

Of all who, on Despair's unhallow'd bed

Lying down to die, have suddenly arisen

At thy soft-murmured words, " Let there be light ! "

ROMANCE. 167

At the soft-murmured words that were fulfilled

In the seraphic glancing of thine eyes, —

Of all who owe thee most, whose gratitude

Nearest resembles worship, — oh, remember

The truest — the most fervently devoted,

And think that these weak lines are written by him, —

By him who, as he pens them, thrills to think

His spirit is communing with an angel's.

ROMANCE.

ROMANCE, who loves to nod and sing,
With drowsy head and folded wing,
Among the green leaves as they shake
Far down within some shadowy lake,

To me a painted paroquet
Hath been a most familiar bird, —

Taught me my alphabet to say —
To lisp my very earliest word
While in the wild wood I did lie,
A child — with a most knowing eye.

Of late, eternal Condor years

So shake the very Heaven on high
With tumult as they thunder by,

I have no time for idle cares

Through gazing on the unquiet sky.

And when an hour with calmer wings

Its down upon my spirit flings —
That little time with lyre and rhyme

1 68 SPIRITS OF THE DEAD

To while away — forbidden things !

My heart would feel to be a crime,
Unless it trembled with the strings.

SPIRITS OF THE DEAD.

THY soul shall find itself alone

'Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone :

Not one, of all the crowd, to pry

Into thine hour of secrecy.

Be silent in that solitude

Which is not loneliness, — for then
The spirits of the dead who stood

In life before thee are again
In death around thee, — and their will
Shall overshadow thee : be still.

The night, though clear, shall frown, —

And the stars shall not look down

From their high thrones in Heaven,

With light like Hope to mortals given :

But their red orbs, without beam,

To thy weariness shall seem

As a burning and a fever

Which would cling to thee forever.

Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish, — •

Now are visions ne'er to vanish :

From thy spirit shall they pass

No more — like dewdrops from the grass.

A DREAM. 169

The breeze — the breath of God — is still ;

And the mist upon the hill

Shadowy — shadowy — yet unbroken,

Is a symbol and a token, —

How it hangs upon the trees,

A mystery of mysteries !

TO

THE bowers whereat, in dreams, I see

The wantonest singing birds,
Are lips — and all thy melody

Of lip-begotten words.

Thine eyes, in Heaven of heart enshrin'd,

Then desolately fall,
Oh, God! on my funereal mind

Like starlight on a pall.

Thy heart — thy heart — I wake and sigh,

And sleep to dream till day
Of the truth that gold can never buy —

Of the baubles that it may.

A DREAM.

IN visions of the dark night

I have dreanVd of joy departed ;

But a waking dream of life and light
Hath left me broken-hearted.

170 THE LAKE.— TO

Ah, what is not a dream by day

To him whose eyes are cast
On things around him with a ray

Turned back upon the past?

That holy dream — that holy dream,
While all the world were chiding,

Hath cheered me as a lovely beam
A lonely spirit guiding.

What tho' that light, thro1 storm and niglrt

So trembled from afar, —
What could there be more purely bright

In Truth's day star?

THE LAKE. — TO

IN spring of youth it was my lot

To haunt of the wide world a spot

The which I could not love the less, —

So lovely was the loveliness

Of a wild lake, with black rock bound,

And the tall pines that towered around.

But when the night had thrown her pall

Upon that spot, as upon all,

And the mystic wind went by

Murmuring in melody, —

Then — ah, then I would awake

To the terror of the lone lake.

Yet that terror was not fright,

But a tremulous delight, —

SONG.

A feeling not the jewelled mine
Could teach or bribe me to define, —
Nor Love — although the Love were thine.

Death was in that poisonous wave,

And its gulf a fitting grave

For him who thence could solace bring

To his lone imagining, —

Whose solitary soul could make

An Eden of that dim lake.

SONG.

I SAW thee on the bridal day,

When a burning blush came o'er thee,

Though happiness around thee lay,
The world all love before thee :

And in thine eye a kindling light

(Whatever it might be)
Was all on Earth my aching sight

Of Loveliness could see.

That blush, perhaps, was maiden shame, —

As such it well may pass, —
Though its glow hath raised a fiercer flame

In the breast of him, alas !

Who saw thee on that bridal day,

When that deep blush would come o'er thee,
Though happiness around thee lay,

The world all love before thee.

*72 ALONE.

TO HELEN.

HELEN, thy beauty is to me

Like those Nicean barks of yore,

That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,

Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece

And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo ! in yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand !

The agate lamp within thy hand,
Ah ! Psyche, from the regions which

Are Holy Land !

ALONE.

FROM childhood's hour I have not been
As others were, — I have not seen
As others saw, — I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken

ALONE. 173

My sorrow ; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone ;
And all I loved, /loved alone.
Then — in my childhood — in the dawn
Of a most stormy life was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still :
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold, —
From the lightning in the sky
As it passM me flying by, —
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION.

CHARLES DICKENS, in a note now lying before me,
alluding to an examination I once made of the mechan
ism of " Barnaby Rudge," says: "By the way, are
you aware that Godwin wrote his ' Caleb Williams '
backwards? He first involved his hero in a web of
difficulties, forming the second volume, and then, for
the first, cast about him for some mode of accounting
for what had been done."

I cannot think this the precise mode of procedure
on the part of Godwin, — and indeed what he ac
knowledges, is not altogether in accordance with Mr.
Dickens's idea, — but the author of " Caleb Williams "
was too good an artist not to perceive the advantage
derivable from at least a somewhat similar process.
Nothing is more clear than that every plot, worth the
name, must be elaborated to its denouement before
anything be attempted with the pen. It is only with
the denouement constantly in view that we can give a
plot its indispensable air of consequence, or causation,
by making the incidents, and especially the tone at all
points, tend to the development of the intention.

There is a radical error, I think, in the usual mode
of constructing a story. Either history affords a thesis,

175

176 THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION.

or one is suggested by an incident of the day, — or.
at best, the author sets himself to work in the com
bination of striking events to form merely the basi"
of his narrative, designing, generally, to fill in witft
description, dialogue, or autorial comment, whatever
crevices of fact, or action, may, from page to page,
render themselves apparent.

I prefer commencing with the consideration of an
effect. Keeping originality always in view, — for he
is false to himself who ventures to dispense with so
obvious and so easily attainable a source of interest,

— I say to myself, in the first place, "Of the innu
merable effects, or impressions, of which the heart,
the intellect, or (more generally) the soul is suscep"
tible, what one shall I, ,on the present occasion.,
select?" Having chosen a novel, first, and secondly
a vivid effect, I consider whether it can be best
wrought by incident or tone, — whether by ordinary
incidents and peculiar tone, or the converse, or by
peculiarity both of incident and tone, — afterward
looking about me (or rather within) for such combi
nations of event, or tone, as shall best aid me in the
construction of the effect.

I have often thought how interesting a magazine
paper might be written by any author who would

— that is to say, who could — detail, step by step,
the processes by which any one of his compositions
attained its ultimate point of completion. Why such
a paper has never been given to the world, I am
much at a loss to say; but, perhaps, the autorial
vanity has had more to do with the omission than
any one other cause. Most writers — poets in espe-

THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION. 177

cial — prefer having it understood that they compose
by a species of fine frenzy — an ecstatic intuition —
and would positively shudder at letting the public take
a peep behind the scenes, at the elaborate and vacil
lating crudities of thought — at the true purposes
seized only at the last moment — at the innumerable
glimpses of idea that arrived not at the maturity of
full view — at the fully matured fancies discarded in
despair as unmanageable — at the cautious selections
and rejections — at the painful erasures and interpo
lations — in a word, at the wheels and pinions — the
tackle for scene-shifting — the step-ladders and demon-
traps — the cock's feathers, the red paint and the black
patches, which, in ninety-nine cases out of the hun
dred, constitute the properties of the literary histrio.

I am aware, on the other hand, that the case is by
no means common, in which an author is at all in
condition to retrace the steps by which his conclu
sions have been attained. In general, suggestions,
having arisen pell-mell, are pursued and forgotten in
a similar manner.

For my own part, I have neither sympathy with
the repugnance alluded to, nor at any time the least
difficulty in recalling to mind the progressive steps
of any of my compositions ; and, since the interest
of an analysis, or reconstruction, such as I have con
sidered a desideratum, is quite independent of any
real or fancied interest in the thing analyzed, it will
not be regarded as a breach of decorum on my part
to show the modus operandi by which some of my
own works were put together. I select " The Raven,11
as most generally known. It is my design to render

178 THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION.

it manifest that no one point in its composition is
referrible either to accident or intuition, — that the
work proceeded, step by step, to its completion, with
the precision and rigid consequence of a mathemati
cal problem.

Let us dismiss, as irrelevant to the poem, per se,
;he circumstance — or say the necessity — which, in
the first place, gave rise to the intention of composing
a poem that should suit at once the popular and the
critical taste.

We commence, then, with this intention.

The initial consideration was that of extent. If
any literary work is too long to be read at one sit
ting, we must be content to dispense with the im
mensely important effect derivable from unity of
•repression ; for if two sittings be required, the
affairs of the world interfere, and everything like
totality is at once destroyed. But since, ceteris part-
bus^ no poet can afford to dispense with anything
that may advance his design, it but remains to be
seen whether there is, in extent, any advantage to
counterbalance the loss of unity which attends it.
Here I say no, at once. What we term a long poem
is, in fact, merely a succession of brief ones, — that
is to say, of brief poetical effects. It is needless to
demonstrate that a poem is such, only inasmuch as
it intensely excites, by elevating, the soul ; and all
intense excitements are, through a psychal necessity,
brief. For this reason, at least one half of the "Para
dise Lost" is essentially prose, — a succession of
poetical excitements interspersed, inevitably, with
corresponding depressions, — the whole being de-

THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION. 179

prived, through the extremeness of its length, of the
vastly important artistic element, totality, or unity,
of effect.

It appears evident, then, that there is a distinct
limit, as regards length, to all works of literary art,
— the limit of a single sitting, — and that, although
in certain classes of prose composition, such as
" Robinson Crusoe," (demanding no unity,) this limit
may be advantageously overpassed, it can never
properly be overpassed in a poem. Within this
limit, the extent of a poem may be made to bear
mathematical relation to its merit, — in other words,
to the excitement or elevation, — again, in other
words, to the degree of the true poetical effect which
it is capable of inducing; for it is clear that the
brevity must be in direct ratio of the intensity of the
intended effect: this, with one proviso — that a cer
tain degree of duration is absolutely requisite for the
production of any effect at all.

Holding in view these considerations, as well as
that degree of excitement which I deemed not above
the popular, while not below the critical, taste, I
reached at once what I conceived the proper length
for my intended poem, — a length of about one
hundred lines. It is, in fact, a hundred and eight.

My next thought concerned the choice of an
impression, or effect, to be conveyed : and here I
may as well observe that, throughout the construction,
I kept steadily in view the design of rendering the
work universally appreciable. I should be carried
too far out of my immediate topic were I to demon
strate a point upon which I have repeatedly insisted,

I So THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION.

and which, with the poetical, stands not in the slight
est need of demonstration, — the point, I mean, that
Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem.
A few words, however, in elucidation of my real
meaning, which some of my friends have evinced a
disposition to misrepresent. That pleasure which
is at once the most intense, the most elevating, and
the most pure, is, I believe, found in the contempla
tion of the beautiful. When, indeed, men speak of
Beauty, they mean, precisely, not a quality, as is
supposed, but an effect, — they refer, in short, just
to that intense and pure elevation of soul — not
of intellect, or of heart — upon which I have com
mented, and which is experienced in consequence of
contemp/ating "the beautiful." Now I designate
Beauty as the province of the poem, merely because
it is an obvious rule of Art that effects should be
made to spring from direct causes, — that objects
should be attained through means best adapted for
their attainment, — no one as yet having been weak
enough to deny that the peculiar elevation alluded
to is most readily attained in the poem. Now the
object, Truth, or the satisfaction of the intellect, and
the object Passion, or the excitement of the heart,
are, although attainable, to a certain extent, in poetry,
far more readily attainable in prose. Truth, in fact,
demands a precision, and Passion a homeliness (the
truly passionate will comprehend me) which are
absolutely antagonistic to that Beauty which, I main
tain, is the excitement, or pleasurable elevation, of
the soul. It by no means follows from anything here
said, that passion, or even truth, may not be intro-

THE PHILOSOPHY OP COMPOSITION. 181

duced, and even profitably introduced, into a poem,
— for they may serve in elucidation, or aid the gen
eral effect, as do discords in music, by contrast, —
but the true artist will always contrive, first, to tone
them into proper subservience to the predominant
aim, and, secondly, to enveil them, as far as possible,
in that Beauty which is the atmosphere and the
essence of the poem.

Regarding, then, Beauty as my province, my next
question referred to the tone of its highest manifes
tation, — and all experience has shown that this tone
is one of sadness. Beauty of whatever kind, in its
supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive
soul to tears. Melancholy is thus the most legitimate
of all the poetical tones.

The length, the province, and the tone, being thus
determined, I betook myself to ordinary induction,
with the view of obtaining some artistic piquancy
which might serve me as a keynote in the construc
tion of the poem, — some pivot upon which the
whole structure might turn. In carefully thinking
over all the usual artistic effects, — or more properly
points, in the theatrical sense, — I did not fail to per
ceive immediately that no one had been so universally
employed as that of the refrain. The universality
of its employment sufficed to assure me of its intrin
sic value, and spared me the necessity of submitting
it to analysis. I considered it, however, with regard
to its susceptibility of improvement, and soon saw it
to be in a primitive condition. As commonly used,
the refrain, or burden, not only is limited to lyric
verse, but depends for its impression upon the force

1 82 THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION.

of monotone — both in sound and thought. The
pleasure is deduced solely from the sense of identity
— of repetition. I resolved to diversify, and so
heighten, the effect, by adhering, in general, to the
monotone of sound, while I continually varied that
of thought : that is to say, I determined to produce
continuously novel effects, by the variation of the
application of the refrain, — the refrain itself
remaining, for the most part, unvaried.

These points being settled, I next bethought me
of the nature of my refrain. Since its application
was to be repeatedly varied, it was clear that the
refrain itself must be brief, for there would have
been an insurmountable difficulty in frequent varia
tions of application in any sentence of length. In
proportion to the brevity of the sentence, would, of
course, be the facility of the variation. This led me
at once to a single word as the best refrain.

The question now arose as to the character of the
word. Having made up my mind to a refrain, the
division of the poem into stanzas was, of course, a
corollary, — the refrain forming the close to each
stanza. That such a close, to have force, must be
sonorous and susceptible of protracted emphasis,
admitted no doubt : and these considerations inev
itably led me to the long o as the most sonorous
vowel, in connection with r as the most producible
consonant.

The sound of the refrain being thus determined*
it became necessary to select a word embodying this
sound, and at the same time in the fullest possible
keeping with that melancholy which I had predeter-

THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION. 183

mined as the tone of the poem. In such a search it
would have been absolutely impossible to overlook
the word " Nevermore." In fact, it was the very first
which presented itself.

The next desideratum was a pretext for the con
tinuous use of the one word " Nevermore." In
observing the difficulty which I at once found in
inventing a sufficiently plausible reason for its contin
uous repetition, I did not fail to perceive that this
difficulty arose solely from the pre-assumption that
the word was to be so continuously or monotonously
spoken by a human being, — I did not fail to per
ceive, in short, that the difficulty lay in the reconcil
iation of this monotony with the exercise of reason
on the part of the creature repeating the word.
Here, then, immediately arose the idea of a non-
reasoning creature capable of speech ; and, very
naturally, a parrot, in the first instance, suggested
itself, but was superseded forthwith by a Raven, as
equally capable of speech, and infinitely more in
keeping with the intended tone.

I had now gone so far as the conception of a
Raven — the bird of ill omen — monotonously repeat
ing the one word, " Nevermore," at the conclusion
of each stanza, in a poem of melancholy tone, and
in length about one hundred lines. Now, never
losing sight of the object supremeness, or perfection,
at all points, I asked myself, "Of all melancholy
topics, what, according to the universal understand
ing of mankind, is the most melancholy?1' Death —
was the obvious reply. "And when," I said, "is
this most melancholy of topics most poetical ? "

1 84 THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION.

From what I have already explained at some length,
the answer here also is obvious, " When it most
closely allies itself to Beauty : the death, then, of a
beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical
topic in the world ; and equally is it beyond doubt
that the lips best suited for such topics are those of
a bereaved lover."

I had now to combine the two ideas of a lover
lamenting his deceased mistress and a Raven con
tinuously repeating the word " Nevermore.11 I had
to combine these, bearing in mind my design of
varying, at every turn, the application of the word
repeated ; but the only intelligible mode of such
combination is that of imagining the Raven employ
ing the word in answer to the queries of the lover.
And here it was that I saw at once the opportunity
afforded for the effect on which I had been depend
ing, — that is to say, the effect of the variation of
application. I saw that I could make the first query
propounded by the lover — the first query to which
the Raven should reply " Nevermore11 — that I could
make this first query a commonplace one — the
second less so — the third still less, and so on —
until at length the lover, startled from his original
nonchalance by the melancholy character of the word
itself — by its frequent repetition — and by a con
sideration of the ominous reputation of the fowl that
uttered it — is at length excited to superstition, and
wildly propounds queries of a far different character

— queries whose solution he has passionately at heart

— propounds them half in superstition and half in
that species of despair which delights in self-torture

THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION, 185

• — propounds them not altogether because he believes
in the prophetic or demoniac character of the bird
(which, reason assures him, is merely repeating a
lesson learned by rote), but because he experiences
a frenzied pleasure in so modelling his questions as to
receive from the expected "Nevermore" the most
delicious because the most intolerable of sorrow.
Perceiving the opportunity thus afforded me, — or,
more strictly, thus forced upon me in the progress
of the construction, — I first established in mind the
climax, or concluding query, — that query in reply
to which this word " Nevermore " should involve the
utmost conceivable amount of sorrow and despair.

Here, then, the poem may be said to have its be
ginning — at the end, where all works of art should
begin, — for it was here, at this point of my precon-
siderations, that I first put pen to paper in the com
position of the stanza, —

" Prophet ! " cried I, " thing of evil ! — prophet still,

if bird or devil !
By that Heaven that bends above us — by that God

we both ador.; I —
Tell this soul with sorrow laden, if, within the distant

Aiden,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name

Lenore, —
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels

name Lenore."

Quoth the Raven, " Nevermore.'1

I composed this stanza, at this point, first, that,
by establishing the climax, I might the better vary

1 86 THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION.

and graduate, as regards seriousness and importance,
the preceding queries of the lover; and, secondly,
that I might definitely settle the rhythm, the metre,
and the length and general arrangement of the
stanza, as well as graduate the stanzas which were
to precede, so that none of them might surpass this
in rhythmical effect. Had I been able, in the sub
sequent composition, to construct more vigorous
stanzas, I should, without scruple, have purposely
enfeebled them, so as not to interfere with the cli
macteric effect.

And here I may as well say a few words of the
versification. My first object (as usual) was origi
nality. The extent to which this has been neglected,
in versification, is one of the most unaccountable
things in the world. Admitting that there is little
possibility of variety in mere rhythm, it is still clear
that the possible varieties of metre and stanza are
absolutely infinite ; and yet, for centuries, no man,
in verse, has ever done, or ever seemed to think of
doing, an original thing. The fact is, that original
ity (unless in minds of very unusual force) is by no
means a matter, as some suppose, of impulse or in
tuition. In general, to be found, it must be elabor
ately sought, and although a positive merit of the
highest class, demands in its attainment less of in
vention than negation.

Of course, I pretend to no originality in either the
rhythm or metre of " The Raven." The former is
trochaic, — the latter is octameter acatalectic, alter
nating with heptameter catalectic repeated in the
refrain of the fifth verse, and terminating with

THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION. 187

tetrameter catalectic. Less pedantically, the feet
employed throughout (trochees) consist of a long
syllable followed by a short : the first line of the
stanza consists of eight of these feet, the second of
seven and a half (in effect two thirds), the third of
eight, the fourth of seven and a half, the fifth the
same, the sixth three and a half. Now, each of these
lines, taken individually, has been employed before,
and what originality "The Raven" has, is in their
combination into stanza ; nothing even remotely ap
proaching this combination has ever been attempted.
The effect of this originality of combination is aided
by other unusual, and some altogether novel effects,
arising from an extension of the application of the
principles of rhyme and alliteration.

The next point to be considered was the mode of
bringing together the lover and the Raven, — and
the first branch of this consideration was the locale.
For this the most natural suggestion might seem to
be a forest, or the fields ; but it has always appeared
to me that a close circumscription of space is abso
lutely necessary to the effect of insulated incident :
it has the force of a frame to a picture. It has an
indisputable moral power in keeping concentrated the
attention, and, of course, must not be confounded with
mere unity of place.

I determined, then, to place the lover in his cham
ber, — in a chamber rendered sacred to him by mem
ories of her who had frequented it. The room is
represented as richly furnished, — this in mere pur
suance of the ideas I have already explained on the
subject of Beauty, as the sole true poetical thesis.

1 88 THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION.

The locale being thus determined, I had now to
introduce the bird, — and the thought of introducing
him through the window was inevitable. The idea
of making the lover suppose, in the first instance,
that the flapping of the wings of the bird against the
shutter is a "tapping "at the door, originated in a
wish to increase, by prolonging, the reader's curi
osity, and in a desire to admit the incidental effect
arising from the lover's throwing open the door, find
ing all dark, and thence adopting the half-fancy that
it was the spirit of his mistress that knocked.

I made the night tempestuous, first, to account for
the Raven seeking admission ; and secondly, for the
effect of contrast with the (physical) serenity within
the chamber.

I made the bird alight on the bust of Pallas, also
for the effect of contrast between the marble and the
plumage, — it being understood that the bust was
absolutely suggested 'by the bird, — the bust of Pallas
being chosen, first, as most in keeping with the schol
arship of the lover ; and, secondly, for the sonorous
ness of the word Pallas, itself.

About the middle of the poem, also, I have availed
myself of the force of contrast, with the view of
deepening the ultimate impression. For example, an
air of the fantastic — approaching as nearly to the
ludicrous as was admissible — is given to the Raven's
entrance. He comes in " with many a flirt and flutter."
Not the least obeisance made he, — not a moment

stopped or stayed he, —

But with mien of lord or lady, perched above my
chamber-door.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION. 189

In the two stanzas which follow, the design is more
obviously carried out : —
Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into

smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance

it wore, —
"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I

said, " art sure no craven, —
Ghastly, grim and ancient Raven, wandering from

the nightly shore, —
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's

Plutonian shore."

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear dis
course so plainly,

Though its answer little meaning — little relevancy
bore ;

For we cannot help agreeing that no living human
being

Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his
chamber-door, —

Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his
chamber-door,

With such name as " Nevermore."

The effect of the denouement being thus provided
for, I immediately drop the fantastic for a tone of the
most profound seriousness, — this tone commencing
in the stanza directly following the one last quoted,
with the line, —

But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust,
spoke onlv. etc.

190 THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION.

From this epoch the lover no longer jests, — no
longer sees anything even of the fantastic in the
Raven's demeanor. He speaks of him as a "grim,
ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore,"
and feels the " fiery eyes " burning into his " bosonVs
core.11 This revolution of thought, or fancy, on the
lover's part, is intended to induce a similar one on
the part of the reader, — to bring the mind into a
proper frame for the denouement, — which is now
brought about as rapidly and as directly as possible.

With the denouement proper — with the Raven's
reply, " Nevermore,11 to the lover's final demand if
he shall meet his mistress in another world — the
poem, in its obvious phase, that of a simple narra
tive, may be said to have its completion. So far,
everything is within the limits of the accountable, —
of the real. A raven, having learned by rote the
single word " Nevermore,11 and having escaped from
the custody of its owner, is driven at midnight,
through the violence of a storm, to seek admission
at a window from which a light still gleams, — the
chamber-window of a student, occupied half in por
ing over a volume, half in dreaming of a beloved
mistress deceased. The casement being thrown
open at the fluttering of the bird1s wings, the bird
itself perches on the most convenient seat out of the
immediate reach of the student, who, amused by the
incident and the oddity of the visitors demeanor,
demands of it, in jest and without looking for a
reply, its name. The raven addressed, answers with
its customary word, "Nevermore,11 — a word which
finds immediate echo in the melancholy heart of the

THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION. 191

student, who, giving utterance aloud to certain
thoughts suggested by the occasion, is again startled
by the fowl's repetition of " Nevermore." The stu
dent now guesses the state of the case, but is im
pelled, as I have before explained, by the human
thirst for self-torture, and in part by superstition, to
propound such queries to the bird as will bring him,
the lover, the most of the luxury of sorrow, through
the anticipated answer, " Nevermore." With the
indulgence, to the extreme, of this self-torture, the
narration, in what I have termed its first or obvious
phase, has a natural termination; and so far there
has been no overstepping of the limits of the real.

But in subjects so handled, however skilfully, or
with however vivid an array of incident, there is
always a certain hardness of nakedness, which repels
the artistical eye. Two things are invariably re
quired : first, some amount of complexity, or, more
properly, adaptation ; and, secondly, some amount
of suggestiveness — some undercurrent, however
indefinite, of meaning. It is this latter, in especial,
which imparts to a work of art so much of that
richness (to borrow from colloquy a forcible term)
which we are too fond of confounding with the ideal.
It is the excess of the suggested meaning — it is the
rendering this the upper instead of the under current
of the theme — which turns into prose (and that of
the very flattest kind) the so-called poetry of the
so-called transcendentalists.

Holding these opinions, I added the two conclud
ing stanzas of the poem, — their suggestiveness being
thus made to pervade all the narrative which has

192 THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION.

preceded them. The undercurrent of meaning is
rendered first apparent in the lines —

" Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy
form from off my door ! "

Quoth the Raven, " Nevermore !"

It will be observed that the words " from out my
heart" involve the first metaphorical expression in
the poem. They, with the answer, "Nevermore,"
dispose the mind to seek a moral in all that has
been previously narrated. The reader begins now
to regard the Raven as emblematical ; but it is not
until the very last line of the very last stanza that
the intention of making him emblematical of Mourn
ful and Never-ending Remembrance is permitted
distinctly to be Seen : —

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is

sitting,
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber

door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that

is dreaming.
And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his

shadow on the floor, —
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating

on the floor

Shall be lifted — nevermore.

THE POWER OF WORDS. 193

THE POWER OF WORDS.

Oinos, — Pardon, Agathos, the weakness of a
spirit new-fledged with immortality!

Agathos. — You have spoken nothing, my Oinos,
for which pardon is to be demanded. Not even here
is knowledge a thing of intuition. For wisdom, ask
of the angels freely, that it may be given.

Oinos. — But in this existence, I dreamed that I
should be at once cognizant of all things, and thus
at once happy in being cognizant of all.

Agathos. — Ah, not in knowledge is happiness,
but in the acquisition of knowledge ! In forever
knowing, we are forever blessed ; but to know all,
were the curse of a fiend.

Oinos. — But does not The Most High know all?

Agathos. — That (since He is the Most High)
must be still the one thing unknown even to HIM.

Oinos. — But, since we grow hourly in knowledge,
must not at last all things be known?

Agathos. — Look down into the abysmal distances !
— attempt to force the gaze down the multitudinous
vistas of the stars, as we sweep slowly through them
thus — and thus — and thus ! Even the spiritual
vision, is it not at all points arrested by the continu

194 THE POWER OF WORDS.

ous golden walls of the universe ? — the walls of the
myriads of the shining bodies that mere number has
appeared to blend into unity?

Oinos. — I clearly perceive that the infinity of mat
ter is no dream.

Agathos. — There are no dreams in Aidenn ; but it
is here whispered that, of this infinity of matter, the
sole purpose is to afford infinite springs, at which
the soul may allay the thirst to know which is forever
unquenchable within it, since to quench it would be
to extinguish the soul's self. Question me, then, my
Oinos, freely and without fear. Come, we will leave
to the left the loud harmony of the Pleiades, and
swoop outward from the throne into the starry mead
ows beyond Orion, where, for pansies and violets,
and hearts-ease, are the beds of the triplicate and
triple-tinted suns.

Oinos. — And now, Agathos, as we proceed, in
struct me ! Speak to me in the earth's familiar
tones! I understood not what you hinted to me,
just now, of the modes or of the methods of what, dur
ing mortality, we were accustomed to call Creation.
Do you mean to say that the Creator is not God?

Agathos. — I mean to say that the Deity does not
create.

Oinos. — Explain !

Agathos. — In the beginning only, He created.
The seeming creatures which are now, throughout
the universe, so perpetually springing into being, can
only be considered as the mediate or indirect, not as
the direct or immediate results of the Divine creative
power.

THE POWER OF WORDS. 195

Oinos. — Among men, my Agathos, this idea would
be considered heretical in the extreme.

Agathos. — Among angels, my Oinos, it is seen to
be simply true.

Oinos. — I can comprehend you thus far, — that
certain operations of what we term Nature, or the
natural laws, will, under certain conditions, give rise
to that which has all the appearance of creation.
Shortly before the final overthrow of the earth, there
were, I well remember, many very successful experi
ments in what some philosophers were weak enough
to denominate the creation of animalcule.

Agathos. — The cases of which you speak were,
in fact, instances of the secondary creation, — and of
the only species of creation which has ever been,
since the first word spoke into existence the first
law.

Oinos. — Are not the starry worlds that, from the
abyss of nonentity, burst hourly forth into the heav
ens, — are not these stars, Agathos, the immediate
handiwork of the King?

Agathos. — Let me endeavor, my Oinos, to lead
you, step by step, to the conception I intend. You
are well aware that, as no thought can perish, so no
act is without infinite result. We moved our hands,
for example, when we were dwellers on the earth,
and, in so doing, we gave vibration to the atmos
phere which engirdled it. This vibration was indefin
itely extended, till it gave impulse to every particle
of the earth's air, which thenceforward, and forever,
was actuated by the one movement of the hand.
This fact the mathematicians of our globe well knew.

196 THE POWER OF WO&DS.

They made the special effects, indeedjlwrought In the
fluid by special impulses, the subject of exact calcu
lation ; so that it became easy to determine in what
precise period an impulse of given extent would
engirdle the orb, and impress (forever) every atom
of the atmosphere circumambient. Retrograding,
they found no difficulty, from &-. given effect, under
given conditions, in determining the value of the
original impulse. Now the mathematicians who saw
that the results of any given impulse were absolutely
endless, and who saw that a portion of these results
were accurately traceable through the agency of
algebraic analysis, — who saw, too, the facility of the
retrogradation, — these men saw, at the same time,
that this species of analysis itself had within itself a
capacity for indefinite progress, — that there were no
bounds conceivable to its advancement and applica
bility, except within the intellect of him who advanced
or applied it. But at this point our mathematicians
paused.

Oinos. — And why, Agathos, should they have
proceeded?

Agathos. — Because there were some considera
tions of deep interest beyond. It was deducible
from what they knew, that, to a being of infinite
understanding — one to whom the perfection of the
algebraic analysis lay unfolded — there could be no
difficulty in tracing every impulse given the air —
and the ether through the air — to the remotest con
sequences at any even infinitely remote epoch of
time. It is, indeed, demonstrable that every such
impulse given the air, must, in the end, impress every

• T'TE POWER OF WORDS. 197

individual th ng that exists 'within the universe ; and
the being of infinite understanding — the being
whom we have imagined — might trace the remote
undulations of the impulse — trace them upward
and onward in their influences upon all particles of
all matter — upward and onward forever in their
modifications of o'd forms ; or, in other words, in
their creation of new, until he found them reflected
— unimpressive at last — back from the throne of the
Godhead. And not only could such a being do this,
but at any epoch, should a given result be afforded
him — should one of these numberless comets, for
example, be presented to his inspection — he could
have no difficulty in determining, by the analytic
retrogradation, to what original impulse it was due.
This power of retrogradation in its absolute fulness
and perfection — this faculty of referring at all epochs
all effects to all causes — is of course the prerogative
of the Deity alone ; but in every variety of degree,
short of the absolute perfection, is the power itself
exercised by the whole host of the Angelic Intelli
gences.

Oinos. — But you speak merely of impulses upon
the air.

Agathos. — In speaking of the air, I referred only
to the earth : but the general proposition has refer
ence to impulses upon the ether, — which, since it
pervades (and alone pervades) all space, is thus the
great medium of creation.

Oinos. — Then all motion, of whatever nature,
creates ?

Agathos. — It must : but a true philosophy has

198 THE POWER OF WORDS.

Jong taught that the source of all motion is thought,
and the source of all thought is —

Oinos. — God.

Agathos. — I have spoken to you, Oinos, as to a
child of the fair Earth which lately perished — of
impulses upon the atmosphere of the Earth.

Onios. — You did.

Agathos. — And while I thus spoke, did there not
cross your mind some thought of the physical power
of words ? Is not every word an impulse on the air?

Oinos. — But why, Agathos, do you weep? And
why, oh why do your wings droop as we hover above
this fair star, which is the greenest and yet most
terrible of all we have encountered in our flight?
Its brilliant flowers look like a fairy dream, but its
fierce volcanoes like the passions of a turbulent
heart.

Agathos. — They are ! — they are ! This wild star
— it is now three centuries since, with clasped hands,
and with streaming eyes, at the feet of my beloved —
I spoke it — with a few passionate sentences — into
birth. Its brilliant flowers are the dearest of all
unfulfilled dreams, and its raging volcanoes are the
passions of the most turbulent and unhallowed of
hearts.

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